Why Boutiques Succeed and Fail. The Truth about Running a Boutique.

There we go. What we feel at the bottom at the boutique up here is four of the main reasons that retailers are struggling right now. 2022 is not going to be any different. They're going to continue. Life is going to continue to evolve very fast. Technology, people, shopping online. Covid is not going away, but our consumer still wants to spend money. But our consumer has changed a little bit over, over the pandemic. And I want to talk about that a little bit here today. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and we're going to get started. Let me get this out of the way. All right, guys, can we go ahead and see what I'm looking at here? I minimized you guys, so I'm not seeing you, but let's see. Beth, can you unmute yourself and tell me if you can see my screen? Yes, I can see your screen, Sarah. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much. I knew I could count on you. Okay, guys, let me go ahead and get started identifying for the common mistakes made in retail today. Before we go, really, really. Remember, mistakes are great. There's nothing wrong with them. They're just an opportunity to learn. And that's one of the things I see a lot is, you know, humans in general are afraid to make a mistake. No need to be afraid to make a mistake. Right. As long as we're learning from them. So why are these so common? Well, a couple of the common factors we're finding is that, you know, it's an easy entry job, it's an easy entry business. It does not take a lot to go ahead and get started now. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of energy to maintain and to grow. But a lot of times we fail to focus and listen and learn, and we just dive in. We're just diving in. I promise. As I, as I speak to retailers and I go back and we get to the core problem, I think I often find it is because we failed to really focus in the beginning and listen to our customers and learn from the community. And we, and we just decide, we have, we like fun clothes, we have a quote unquote passion for fashion, and we get started in the retail business. So would you ever just play along with me here for a second? But would you ever build a beautiful home but fail to build a road to the home?

Anybody?

No, you would not. You would not do that. You wouldn't do it because why would you have access to this beautiful home, build it and have this Gorgeous place, but then not allow anybody to get there. You guys, we see this happening with websites all the time. Brick and mortars are a little different unless you find a location that's not the best. For the most part, brick and mortars are. You put yourself in a position because, you know, it's good for traffic and good for visibility. But a lot of times we see retailers right now, they're putting the cart before the horse. They are buying inventory. They are getting on Shopify because it's super simple, right? They Google how to start a business, and Shopify pops up and. And they just build this little Shopify website, kind of. At least they get a homepage and add some products to it, but there's no road to it. There is no access point to the business, right? It might be a beautiful home, stuck way back off into the woods, but there's no road to it. Who knows it's there? That's the tough part about online retail. So design, decorate, and stock the home for the family without asking for support or input. Would you ever do that? Would you ever build that home for, say. Say you're a family of five, you have three kids, but you just go ahead and put absolutely everything in the house that you want and expect them to live there and be satisfied and feel at home there and feel loyal to that place? No, because it wouldn't be theirs. And part of building that business is being that for your customer. And I know this is extremely elementary, but often when I'm coaching retailers and I'm asking them questions and we're going back through their business and I' thinking. We're thinking and talking about who their actual customer is. We get back and realize that this business that has been built has been built for the owner and not necessarily built for the customer. So, number one, stop selling products. Customers want the outcome. So I put this right here. Stop buying inventory first. This is the biggest thing that I'm seeing retailers doing. They are putting all the focus on buying. Buying that inventory first. Just buying inventory. And I use the word buying, guys, because. And I hope you dial in on that because I teach this in retail bootcamp and we teach it in Boutique owner Basics. And we'll talk about it coming up in our big training, our best year yet, training that we've got coming up. But buying is what consumers do. Buying is what I'm doing. Buying Christmas gifts for. For my friends and family. I'm buying something I'm not investing in, that I don't go in. I don't Say I have to go invest in a Christmas gift for my nephew. Nope. I am, I am first. I am 100%. I am 100% buying that gift for my nephew. So therefore, when I, when I'm doing that, I expect him to have, you know, enjoy it and use it. I don't expect him to go turn around and, or me get a return on my investment for it. You, as the boutique owner, that's exactly what you're doing. You're Investing, say that 15 to $20 on a product to turn around and get a return on the investment. Because you're selling that to consumer, right? But a lot of times what the retailer is doing is they just see products. They see products and they think, oh, I can sell that. Yep, that's cute. I can sell that without focusing on that outcome. Customers want an outcome anymore. Long are the, long gone are the days where they just go in and they see something, a discovery, because they don't. They're working, they're, they're, they're traveling, they're doing whatever, but they don't have products in front of them. 24. 7 Social media, your phones give your customer all the products they need. They are overwhelmed with products. But what do they want? They want an outcome. They want to feel a certain way. They want something fixed. Right. They want to have fun. That's what is inspiring them to go ahead and buy. But the retailers, a lot of retailers right now that are struggling are focusing on the product. They're not focusing on this 1, 2, and 3. So, example, the cozy, warm sweater keeps me warm and soft, right? That, that makes me feel a certain way. It fixes a problem. And I don't know what is happening with those blue lines and the red lines. Sorry about that. Tires. Are tires fun? No, they're not fun to sell. Right? But they, sir, they sure fix something. And they make a customer feel a certain way. It solves a problem. Same with stain removers. Nobody, you know, very few people are like, growing up thinking, I want to sell stain removers one day. There's a big business in tires and stain removers. And I knew a rep in, in Las Vegas one time that sold belts, built a huge business around selling belts. And I remember when I first met them, I'm like, oh, my gosh, you sell belts all day. Wow, that's crazy. But he looked, he laughed, and he was like, yeah. He goes, people need belts. You don't want to walk around with your pants down all the time. And they made a huge business selling belts. It made people feel comfortable. It fixed a problem, right? And, you know, a lot of his belts were pretty fun. He had an entire division of really, you know, kind of fun, comical belts. But nonetheless, that was an outcome, was not a product. It was not a product. Raincoat, same thing. People buy it for a function. Funny cards, ideally. What. I really don't know what those are for those lines there. Ultimately, we want to create a solution to a problem. What frustrates your customer. And you guys in that download I gave you, I gave you some opportunity to go ahead and print that off and write some things down, like what legitimately frustrates your customer. And I'm telling you, it's not. It's not that there's a lack of clothes on the market. I'm telling you, it's not that there is a lack of products. It has nothing to do with that. It is that they have a problem that they need fixed, right? They have. Whether it's the way the clothes fit or it's the way the clothes move with them or the how they can access the clothes or. Or you know what, they want to look 40. They want to be 40, but they want to be stylish or they want to have. They want to have pants. When they kneel down, their butt crack doesn't show, or they want to go from work to night, or they want something that's sustainable. They want to buy American products, right? They want to support a certain type of business. Different things frustrate different customers. So is there a current solution to that problem for that customer? Think about that. Think about your products through that solution set. Not about if it's just cute or I think I could sell it. And again, some of these solutions are not sexy. Some of them are not sexy. Think the car example, right? Think of the car example and the tires, not exactly sexy. So we got to think like the customer. So let's get to the root of the problem. And I use the word root of the problem because when I talk to stores a lot of times and I ask them, all right now, let's get to the root of the problem where why do you think this is going back? That house example, you know, you build this beautiful home, but you don't build a road to it. You build this beautiful website, but you're not building a traffic plan to that website. But you come to us and say, I don't get any traffic on my website. You come to us and say, my customers aren't buying. Well, the root of the problem goes back To. It's not that they're not buying. It's they don't know how to find you. Right. Or they don't know they don't have a relationship with you. So this is just kind of a fun example. This is the dandelion example. Sometimes we simply don't see the true problem. Think the dandelion cutting off the flower doesn't help fix the problem. Right? If we just drive around with our lawnmowers all day and just cut this flower off and be done with it, we turn around tomorrow and go back outside and there's the dang dandelion again. And I know dandelions have a lot of health benefits, so I actually thought about this when I put this on the slide. Sometimes dandelions are good. I get it. However, sometimes you look at them and they're a weed and they just keep coming back and causing headache for you. Right? We as customers have those problems on the daily. So where's our go to resource that really gets to the root of that problem and really fixes that for us? That's where the loyalty comes in, Right? And people really spend money for that. People spend money to have that problem fixed. So you see the flower and you think, that's it. And you think, I'm going to cut that off. But it doesn't really solve that problem. It's a band aid, Right? There's no loyalty in that. So one of the things that Ashley and I like to do in retail bootcamp, and we do it in all of our courses, we do it in our private coaching here at the Boutique Hub, is the five whys example. So identify the problem, right? Identify the problem. Think through a problem. Think. What is your customer saying, right? What are they communicating to you? And then ask why? And in the download that you have, I gave you that opportunity to ask that why five times. And that is really going to get to the root of the problem. And I kind of. I want to. I want to do this real quick. I want to jump back in here and I want to just. I want to talk through this with you guys real quick. Somebody give me a problem that you're having in your business right now. Somebody give me a problem. I gave you the example of my customers aren't finding my website or my customers aren't shopping on my website. Who wants to just participate a little bit? Yeah, go ahead.

Hi. My customers are coming to my website, but I'm not selling.

Okay. All right, so let's. Why do you think you're not Selling.

Sometimes I think that what I do because I make my own products are not for everybody.

They're not. Right.

Then the price may be a problem there too, because I make one of a kind pieces. So those are the things that I, I'm not converting people to buy my products in my website. Yeah, okay.

All right, so I like what you just said. You said my, I'm not selling, my customers aren't. Then basically you answered the question. Some of the people that you're trying to target, you're going too wide. And we're going to get to that here in just a second, right? You've defined your customer on, but you've not narrowed that down. So you, it doesn't do you any good to be frustrated if every customer is not buying because you're not, you're not providing a product, you're not providing that outcome that everybody wants. Right. So now it's time to figure out who is that niche market? Who is the niche market. And then once we find that niche market and we communicate with them and we, and we put some, you know, we humanize our brand with them and use words that mean something to that market, then we can dive in and really find out why. Why are they or why are they not buying from me? Right? Because, you know, my, my 16 year old daughter, if you're trying to market to her, that might not be anything that's important to her. Right. There's people on this call that is you, if you were to describe your products, they might really resonate and be like, oh man, I want to know more about that. And then there's also people on this call that might be like, nope, that doesn't mean anything to me. And that is okay. There are always, there are always Coke people and there are always Pepsi people. Right? And that is fine. I feel like in 2020 there was this big move to like everybody had to attract everybody. And what happened is we got ourselves so wide and so thin that when we cast this really big net and we're marketing to everyone, we're actually attracting no one. And Ashley and I talk about that all the time. Okay. So right there. And sometimes you don't even have to go five deep in this five whys.

Right?

But so your thing was your customers aren't buying and why aren't they buying? Well, they might not be res, they're not resonating with what you're offering. Why are they not? Well, I'm targeting the wrong people. I'm, I'm, I'm trying To attract people that might not be interested in my product. Right? So how can we fix that? How can we go out the next. The solution to that is then. So we've identified it, now we got to go out and we've got to fix it. We got to get to that root of the problem and say, okay, so now who are these people? How do I attract them? And I gave you an exercise in that worksheet too to kind of start itemizing out who that customer is. So I would get really down to the nitty gritty and define that customer. Ashley and I have a full exercise we'll do in the best year yet challenge and also even further in retail bootcamp that talks gets you into that nitty gritty. Who is my customer? What does she like? Where does she shop? What's her demographic? You know, what's her age? What's her mentality about life, you know, and how then since I know her, how can I speak to her? Right? If I were to go back to my 16 year old daughter, the language that I speak to her is totally different than the language that I would speak to my mother in law completely. And if I were trying to sell them an outcome. Sell them your, sell them this product, sell them the outcome, this feeling. I'm going to fix a problem. They have different problems, they have a different language. Okay, somebody else give me another example.

I have one.

Yeah, Jackie.

Okay, so for example, I saw on Shopify like I had in one day, you know, 10 people went and added, like shopped on my website. Eight people added to carts, but only three converted. So I think my problem is conversion.

Okay, all right, so why are my shoppers not converting? Okay, so then I would go in and say, all right, where, you know, where are they, where are they getting to? They getting all the way to the checkout. Why are they not following through with the checkout? Is there confusion with my return policy? Is there confusion with my shipping? Right. Is there? Am I not offering something as far as alternative payments that they might want? Is my website broken? Right, Go through that, go through that, that checkout process and look and check those efficiencies for your customer. Why are they not converting? Well, they got bounced back or my website, you may find in this that I got to the cart and realized I wanted to double check the size that I put in the cart. So I clicked on this and for some reason my website takes me all the way back to, to the product page. Now I'm off the page. Now I'm not on the cart anymore. Why is that? Well, that's a function within Shopify I need to fix. That might not be it, right? But that, but going through that saying, why did this happen? Oh, I checked out and I have an airfield or, you know, I'm asking for the way my card is set up or something and I'm not, I'm not showing that shipping until very late, right? And so I'm getting through the process and all of a sudden I'm getting sticker shocked by the shipping. Why do I have that there? Oh, well, I don't know. I can easily fix that, right? Those, those are things ultimately, guys I want like the blanket statements of people aren't finding my site, people aren't shopping, people aren't coming in. Whatever it is, I want you to go and dive deeper into that versus telling yourself this. This is the number one thing I hear from my customers is they say, well, they must not like my product and I better go buy more product. They must not like my product. And now I need to source more things. Does anybody else have another one? I worked with somebody the other day that they. We were working through their website. We were just doing little audit on things and they said, well, I get people to my, to my website and I know they're coming from my. My Facebook posts, but they're not buying. So we went back and we said, well, why aren't they buying? Well, they're clicking on this and then they're jumping off the site. Why would they be doing that? So we go back through and we go back and find this, the culprit, the Facebook post. You go back and find the Facebook post. And the Facebook post was this really cute sweater and it was a flat lay and a pair of jeans. And you go there and you get back to the website and it's out. And all there is is one small in the sweater. And then the jeans, I think the jeans were honestly like a size 32. That was all the availability left in that for that flat lay. So therefore the customer came there and they couldn't get what they wanted. Right. So why did they jump off? Well, the beautiful, the beautiful part of a brick and mortar, guys, that I love is when you came into my brick and mortar store, I had you like legit had you in four walls and I would talk to you and do whatever I could to get you to stay there. The longer you stayed, the longer you paid, right? That was the big deal. Websites, you're one TikTok notification or phone call or dog Barking away from abandoning everything, only to swim through the ocean of websites to find it again. So when they do come, it's really important to make sure we are doing everything we can for ease of them to stay. Right. So when they, when you find that you are, you have customers finding your site beautiful, great, then dive down into that. Why, why are they then not converting? Are they not seeing the sizes right? Are the photos not, Are they not answer. Are you not answering all the questions? Do you have a flat laid picture there but no picture of the back? No fit video, no picture of a person actually wearing it? No size suggestions on there? Why is it then that they might not be converting? Go ahead, Jackie.

I have a question. I heard you say the word bounce back a minute ago and I have seen that on the analytics and all that stuff on Shopify. Can you go into what that is a little bit more? Because I don't understand what that is.

So when I, when I was saying like a person might bounce, when you might bounce back out of a. Off of a site, you might go someplace else, right? And then anytime you have to toggle back and forth, right. You run that risk of bouncing off your site.

Okay?

Yep, you run that risk. Anytime you go away in your path, you're think of it as like a roadmap, right? You, you start your journey here, your end of it is over here. And you want a smooth path from. I like this product, I put it in my cart, I'm checking out. Next thing you know it's, it's in, it's in the mail coming to me, right? What happens is if I'm filling that cart, if I have to go bounce back and forth from page to page to page to confirm my information, you run the risk. It's almost like if you put it in brick and mortar standpoint, it's almost like that customer's in the store now they're at the register now they're going back out to their car. Now they come back in, you know what I mean? Or they're coming back into the store now and then they leave again and you really hope they come back because you're sitting there with all that stuff at the counter ready to take their money, but they've left. You're hoping they come back, you're hoping they come back and then all of a sudden they come back and you, then you try to complete that sale. But what happens a lot of times on our websites is we get them to where they, right where they're ready to put their Credit card in, ready, ready to check out. And then all of a sudden, they bounce back onto another page, at which point they can get distracted and leave. So then this gets into a whole nother thing that Ashley and I will go into a ton. So I don't want. I won't go into it today, but then the get back, right? So then they've got this cart. How do we go back and communicate with them to remind them, hey, you left the cart that it out? You know, that's a whole nother marketing thing. But ultimately, ultimately, the big thing today that I really want to get through to you guys is deep, digging down deep into the five whys of why people are not buying. And I promise you, the majority of the customers that are store owners that I talk to over the last two years, they're not asking themselves why. They're making an assumption about their products, and they just go back to fashion go or wherever, and they buy more products. They buy more products, and then they just try to continue to tell themselves that the customer they're targeting, the customer that they're talking to is their said customer. So let me. Let me go back and share my screen here, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna show you.

There we go.

Okay. Where did it go? Can you guys see my presentation now?

Nope.

Well, that would be that. Hold on. Stick with me.

Where did it go?

I know where it went. I closed it. I closed it when I stopped sharing my screen. Sorry.

Hold on.

Hold tight. Okay. Technical difficulties, guys. Sorry about that. Okay, can you see it now?

Yes, we can.

All right, Perfect. Thanks. Okay, perfect. Okay, so we're going to get to the root of the problem. We're going to ask our customers why five times on that download. You guys, you have that ability to go in there and kind of start mapping some of those things out. So the other thing I want you guys to do here is humanize your brand and the solution that you provide. This is extremely important because as I was talking about, you get to the root problem now. We have to change our communication. We have to change the words that we're using with our customers. So we have to build that solution into the message of our daily marketing, right? We have to build that solution word in there. How are you going to fix. What are you fixing? How will you make them feel? Will they have fun? We joke around about the little black dress that a retailer posts on social media, but ultimately, guys, I know why we say little black dress. It is because I have been there, and we run out of time. And we just got a box like six boxes from ups and we want to get all of that on the website. We want to get it all on social and our creativity. We have run out of time. And so it ultimately becomes the little black dress. The little black dress. Here it is, $49.99 little black dress. And we leave it up to the, the doctors and the bankers and the teachers and the stay at home moms. We leave it up to them to decide how it's going to make them feel, what problem it's going to fix, what the function of it is, right? We leave all of this up to our customers. And guess what? That would be like the, the CPA accountant leaving all the tax stuff up to you. That's not your gift. That's not what you know, you are not blessed with that. So we have to humanize our brand and make sure that it is super, super obvious what solution you're offering for your customers. So who is, sorry, who is your customer? Who is it you guys? I guarantee you for a lot of you listening today, and I love that some of you guys have not even launched yet, but your customer today is not the same customer that it was six months ago. And it very well not might not be the customer that you thought it was and you wanted it to be. So again, I think it was. Sarah, you're talking about your jewelry line. You know, who needs this solution, right? Who needs this product? And that's such a huge thing, right? The. The stain remover. The stain remover. There's a marketing effort behind every stain remover that's super powerful because I don't need it every day, right. But when I do need it, I want to trust quickly that this is the product I need. That's going to fix my problem. And I'm going to buy it. I am going to buy it. I'm going to pay money to have my problem fixed. So again, stop buying the inventory first. So here's a couple, a couple of things keep in mind. Hint, this person might not be who you think it is. Again, when you market to everyone, you reach no one. And this is, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Too clearly defined is not narrow. So in 2021, I in retail boot camp, we talked a lot about this. Less is more. Find that niche. You guys look at this trendy, affordable online boutique. That's if that is what you're hanging your hat on, you guys, it's not unique enough. It might have been unique enough back in 2016. But it is not unique enough. Now if you are a brick and mortar store that makes people feel good about themselves. I like that. But there's got to be more to it. There's got to be more to it. Think web developers. I say this, I bring this example because I work with a lot of web developers because I work with a lot of store owners that want to start their own website.

Right.

Or start a website. And so we work with different website developers and this is their claim to fame. We build beautiful websites. Great. Don't you think everybody should be building beautiful. Who in the world is going to market we build ugly websites? Nobody. Shouldn't that be a given that the web developer builds beautiful websites? Builds beautiful functioning websites. What I'm saying is our marketing efforts have got to be unique. We've got to, we've got to narrow down our market laser focus on the type of customers that we're going to serve and the types of problems we're going to solve. And a lot of times we just get too wide and too broad and we really don't target anybody. So just a few tips on finding the right inventory now. I think it's in time, it's time that we can talk about investing in inventory. A couple of things on that worksheet you guys. I get, I talk. I gave you a bunch of going to market tips and these are good for online market as well as brick and mortar market. And in the best year yet, Ashley and I are going to cover a lot more about open to buy plans, budgets, financials, projections, all of that. That'll come later today. I really just wanted to kind of talk over some high level things where I see retailers are making mistakes when they're sourcing their products. So please keep in mind there's a lot of options out there. It's not just those first few things that come up. When you Google wholesale fashion, if you might. Here's my thing and I put it on here as a tip. Number one, avoid fashion goes best of best. If you are spending every time, every moment of your day sourcing products out of the best of the best and then you are the one that comes up to comes online and says why are nobody buying my products? What? You know everybody has the same things I do. Well you just answered your question. If you're spending the exact all your time in the best of the best and every other retailer is spending their time there too. The consumer saturated with that product, they, they've seen it. Because guess what? Fashion go is Also going to send you their. Those stock photos. And that same retailer that gets busy and puts a little black dress on the website will also use that stock photo. So it's the same stock photo and pretty much same cut and paste description. So it does not solve the needs that we talked about in problem number one or two. My tip number two here is avoid investing by price alone. I see a lot of people that say, or I hear a lot of people that say, well, that was only $6, so, yeah, I can sell it. It's only $6. It's only $10. Well, let me just do this, you guys. I talk about sell through a lot in retail bootcamp and I just wrote down a few things here. So say you have $5,000 or 5,000 products, right? Stop sharing this real quick. Okay? Who just thumbs up who likes to talk numbers, right? Because we're in this to make money. So I'm going to give you just a little bit. And this is just chicken scratching. This is basically selling through. So you have 5000 pieces. Quantities, right? 5000 items in your store. 5000 items in your store. And the cost on those is $10. Right? Cost on those is $10. So you've invested $50,000 in cost in products. Right? Does anybody know what a good sell through rate is? Like, percent of those to be sold through?

I read recently that 60% of your inventory should be your sell through, but I'm not sure how accurate.

All right, hey, perfect. Let's use. Let's use that. Let's use 60%. Bell, if you did 60%, that's. You're selling 3,000 of those items. Okay? So when you sell 3,000 of those items, they're $10 it cost that. That is $30,000 it cost, right? How do you feel about that? How do you guys feel about it? How do you feel about it? So we've sold $30,000.

We.

I have $20,000.

Yeah, you do. Yes, you do. We have. All right, so now we're like, okay, that's. And Bell, you're not wrong. Like I. At any. Throughout the year, I like to aim for 80 is my comfort zone. 80 is my comfort zone. But you guys, I'm not going to lie. 60 is pretty normal. Especially 60 when we're not targeting our right customer. Excuse me. Sorry about that.

So.

So crap.

Now we.

What are we going to do? Right? So we brought in 30 and we had all these other bills to pay. We're sitting on $20,000 worth of inventory. That's just sitting there. Right. So we're sitting on 2,000 pieces that's sitting there. And what is it doing? Come on, retail bootcampers. What is it doing? Nothing.

Taking up space.

Yeah, it is taking up space. Not only is it taking up space, it is taking up my energy. It is draining Sarah's energy, because every flipping day, I look at it, and I am thinking, that is 20 grand. Especially today, that is 20 grand that I can't use to pay down my loans or I can't take my kids on vacation, or 20 grand that. That I can't put back in better inventory for spring because pretty soon, people are going to want spring. So how does this happen? It happens by us not sourcing the right inventory. It happens by not knowing who that customer is. It happens by just providing a product and not sourcing and providing a solution to our customers. So if you guys are watching right now and you're like, this is not rocket science. You're absolutely 100% right. It is not rocket science. But what happens is we get caught up in the shuffle of it all and the hustle and bustle, and we're like, yeah. Oh, my God, that's cute. That's only 10 bucks. I can sell that. Oh, the vendor says, this is a good seller. I'll buy that. Oh, it's on. The fashion goes. Best of the best. You bet. I'll get it. That's what happens. We get caught up, our adrenaline gets pumping and rolling, and we just start buying and not investing. So I won't hammer on this much longer, because I think that that example really hits home when you start talking money. It really hits home. Right? And so the scary part of that is when we do that 60% sell through, we did that. Like, we sold Those all at 100%. Right. Full retail. And we all know that that might not be the be what happens. So. All right, let me go back here, and I'll share my screen again. Okay. So, again, avoid forgetting who your customers are. So learning from unsold inventory. I know.

See your screen, Sarah. I'm sorry.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for letting me know. Oh, okay, Here we go now. Nope. What?

It's just black.

It's black. Gosh. Okay, I gotta stop. Stop sharing my screen. Okay, let's try this. I get excited, and I want to talk to you guys, and then. Okay. Can you see this now?

Yep.

Yes.

Back.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay.

So I know this is probably a question in the chat. I haven't pulled those up yet, but I will look at that. But learning from unsold inventory. So, guys, again, I said it in the beginning. Mistakes are not bad. As long as we learn from them. As long as we learn from them. It is unsold for a reason. Your unsold inventory is still sitting there for a reason. So I ask you to do this. Again, I ask you to go ahead and ask why five times. Why is it sitting here? Well, my customers didn't buy it. Why didn't they buy it? Did I get it in at the wrong time? Did I get it in in the wrong fit? Does it not make them feel good? Does it not fix a problem? And is it the wrong price? Did I show it in the wrong way?

Did it.

Did it actually fail to ever get put on social media? Or did I have it in the back corner of my brick and mortar store layered up under something else? My customers didn't see it? Or did I get it in in November when I really should have gotten in in August?

Who knows?

But ask why? If I should have got it in in August and I didn't get it until November, why didn't I pull that purchase order back up and like, oh, man, it was supposed to ship in November. Why did I not call the vendor in August and make that happen? Oh, well, I didn't ever make a note that I should be getting in August. Why didn't I? Well, I didn't get organized. So what do we do? How about you pull out your boutique boss planner or take your desktop calendar and when you have orders that should be coming in, make note of it because you won't remember later on, right? Make note of what should be coming in when get organized. And then in your standard operating procedures, have a policy in place that your person, ours was Heather in the store. Heather knew that on those days, her, she had nothing else more important than this. Getting a hold of the vendors and saying, hey, we're supposed to have tracking numbers for this, this, and this. As of today, we do not. Where are they at? That was Heather's job. Once a month she was diligent about that, and then she would follow up with them. That way we didn't have that problem of getting something in in November that was supposed to be in August. And I get that the shipping and everything is just super crazy right now. But being lazy and not following up on this is not an excuse. So always ask if the product serves the customer. Again, going back to what we talked about. Again, going back to what we talked about earlier, right? Knowing our customer, knowing what they need knowing what that, what, what that item, that solution is going to be. And here's one. Is the market saturated with these types of products? Golly, I again, going back to how much are we, how diluted is the market with certain types of clothing, certain types of items? We see these things all the time, right? Social media is a blessing, but it can also be a curse. So is your customer in need of these products or do they have plenty of options?

Right?

And you're just one of the many, at which point a lot of people fall into that, well, I have to lower my prices. I have to lower my prices to be, to be relevant. And then my thought next goes, well, is it even worth you sourcing that product to begin with? Is it even worth the time and the effort and the energy it's taking for you to put into selling that product? Is your ROI high enough? Right. And I from interviewing customers and talking with my friends and talking with store owners and reading comments in different Facebook groups, right? And being, being active in the retail community and just my ears are turned on to different things than they are they were when I was a business owner. Because I promise you, I walked in your shoes. I know what it's like to be a business owner. You are legit trying to stay ahead every moment of the day. It's not one day at a time, it's one minute at a time, right? So your ears and your eyes are set to different things. Take yourself out of that role and put yourself in the shopper role. Put yourself in the shopper role at least once a week and think, what is the customer thinking? Right? When you see a customer pick up something, touch it, turn it around and put it back, that's a feel issue. Radar in on that right away. When, when certain things go out of your store and they come back, you got to ask why? Did the picture give you false hope? Did it feel bad when you got it right? What was it? What we're seeing in the industry is the quality of products is extremely frustrating to the consumer. So be very mindful of that when we're sourcing products online because that is really hard. You can make a lot of crap look really, really good in a good picture. And that's hard, you guys, because who suffers there, dear customer? And this time of year, who really suffers? The person receiving the gift. And that sucks. That really, really, that's hard. And it's hard to build loyalty there. Customers will remember good quality and quality service. Customer service. Alright, so 22 and beyond. I want to I need to go faster here.

Sorry.

Get noticed in the future. Here's the deal. Personalization and experience. Personalization, experience. I could have made the entire slide. Personalization and experience. Because it is all about me, guys. People have gotten very all about me. Make me feel better about it, make my life better. I want to live my very best life. So how are you going to help me with that? What does that sound like? It sounds like a solution, right? It sounds like a solution. And that is where we as boutiques have the ability to be extra special. So I talked about it earlier. Brand, customer experience, it's about me mentality. Think about that when you're sourcing your products. Thinking about that when you're hearing your customer experience. Customer. So the last tip, last, last issue that I have with, with why are boutiques struggling or failing you guys, this is it. And I guarantee you guys, if you, if this is you put a, put a thumbs up or an amen or I agree in the comments, you guys give some support so people don't feel like they're the only one. But we got to stop doing nothing. We've got to stop spinning our wheels. When we, when we start our day saying we should do TikTok today, we should post on social, we should send out emails. I should really get that blog going. Oh my gosh. I should do the laundry. I should put on makeup. I should stop wearing jogging pants with my dress shirts because they don't make me feel good. I should start going to the gym. All those I shoulds just drain us. It absolutely drains us to the point where at the end of the week we don't feel like we have accomplished anything. So my goal for you today and on that worksheet on the download that you have is please, please, please, please commit to three things. And for those of you guys that are going to join us in best year yet, that's the first thing I'm going to call you out on in January because best year yet is a free training that we do here at the Hub and it is a week long you rah rah retail revival, feel good, opportunity, all the stuff, right? We talk, we cover SEO, we cover mission and mindset, we cover all the financial stuff. We're inward diving deep into the social stuff. So it's going to be huge. But I'm going to ask you that are joining us today, I'm going to ask you come January, what are those three things that you committed to commit to those three things for 30 days, make them a priority Block out some time. And they do not all have to be retail oriented guys. But if they are with the me mentality, they are going to help you. Right. So then I'm going to ask you on those three things, did these tasks produce results? Yes or no? You know what the beautiful part of a no answer is? Well, good. Then I don't have to do that again. And I know it's off my list and I'm done worrying about it. Done. Right. But if they didn't produce results, I'm going to ask why. Right. Did I not go about it correctly? Or have I found, because this happens, have I found that my energy and my efforts and my skill set are not developed enough for an online presence at this point? Right. Did I start a website? But I didn't really run a website. Right. Why? What's happening within those things? Number two, should I continue these activities? Right. Let's start crossing some stuff off our list and making sure the stuff that's theirs is good. What did I learn about my business by this? And what did I learn about my business by this? Or what did I learn about me personally? You could exchange that too. If it's going to the gym or if it's eating healthy or making sure I eat a good breakfast every day, this is a huge, huge thing. Right? But right there should I should. Blank is just a dagger. It knocks us down every time we say it. It is so negative. It is telling us we are not doing it. It is telling us we need to do better. All those things, right. Making us feel bad. Number four, what can I improve? And the reason that I know and Ashley and I know in our heart of hearts that this is one of the number one things that boutique owners are not doing and that's why they're failing is because guess what, the big box stores have people that tell them what to do. They do these things. They have a team that's doing the tiktoks. They have a team that is getting all the social copy ready. They have a team writing the blogs. They have teams that tell them when to turn the lights on and how warm their dressing rooms are supposed to be. They have a team that tells them when the swimsuits are coming and when the swimsuits go on sale. The people that are running those businesses, they are not doing all the thousand million things you are doing every day. That is the beautiful, beautiful part about running a boutique is you have that ability. But it is also scary. And when we start our days with these I should statements it just sets us back. It really, really sets us back. So last thing, time to stop and reflect. What is holding me back? Am I happy in my business? What did I learn today that I can take action on? And then you guys, what am I currently selling that doesn't serve my true customer? What are those 20,000 products that we didn't sell through? What are we going to learn from them? What are we going to learn from them? So next steps. Where do I go from here? Please confirm your customer. Please confirm that customer, identify what inventory needs to go and we'll talk about this. You guys don't, don't stress too much. We'll talk about it a lot in Best Year Yet Challenge. But there's inventory. If it needs to go, just get it gone. Get it gone. We are doing a huge session right now in the Boutique Hub, the main members group. We did a training yesterday. We'll do another one next Tuesday about end of the year inventory, dead inventory, what to sell, what to discount, what to maybe donate. So please try to join us for that and then make sure you're spending time with those three action items. And of course I highly encourage you guys to join us for this, for our Best Year yet challenge. And so here, I just put this up here so you guys could see it. This is what we'll be going over in the Best Year yet challenge. It starts January 3rd. It is a Zoom session just like this with opportunities to kind of chat and, and collaborate back and forth. Ashley and I will get, get some slides and some other worksheets and things like that. We're improving the Best Year yet this year too with some more downloads. So but yeah, we are covering personal team, business planning, inventory, financial profitability, expectations, social and content with Shannon. And then Jeff, our marketing unicorn that you guys have seen here in the hub, he'll be joining us too. So we're excited about that. So there you go. How do we do most. Most everybody still stayed awesome access to this recording. So we can review it? You bet. Absolutely. It is going to. I recorded it in Zoom so it just takes a little bit for that to upload and then we'll send it out and we'll also. I'll send that the, the email of the PDF the download for you too in case for some reason you guys didn't get that. It was, it was posted in the chat here earlier too but I want to kind of go over some of these. How is everybody doing? You feeling? Feeling good? I'm feeling good.

There was a couple of Questions I saw in the comments that I thought were, I know you're going to go to it. You were Jackie, if you see them.

Help me out with them. Yeah.

There's one from Tracy Mitchell that says, how is the best way to know your customer? I thought I knew, but I have only sold to my best friend and sister. And I think a lot of us are like, my, myself, I'm running into that where my mom is my best customer, which is fine, but, you know, sustainable. Does that go down to your niche? Does that, you know, what does it fall on?

Yep, absolutely. Okay, so one of the things I would say is, um, let's dive down into who she is, right? What, what does this person like to do? Where do they like to shop? What do they like to do with their free time? Do they have a lot of disposable income? What is their lifestyle like? And for those of you that are hub members, we have a download in the training library that is all about identifying that customer. And in this, in the download I gave you guys with this webinar, I asked a few of those questions, like, ideally, what are their pain points? Right? And one of the best ways to figure this out is get with your, whoever you think your core customer is right now and just ask them this question, what frustrates you about shopping? And then stop talking. And then when they start talking, say what else? And then ask what else again. That's basically the same thing as the ask why five times. You. You guys will be amazed how many times you use that. Ask why five times across the board. You're going to do it with your family, you're going to do with your kids, you're going to do it with, you know, you're going to ask yourself that question when you're shopping somewhere, like, why did they do that? Why did they do that? Why do they do that? Right? And you will realize there's a lot of things being done out there with zero thought put into it at all, right? So you want to be the one that goes above and beyond that. But for that, for your needs, finding your customer, figure out who that person is. And universally they all have something in common. And what that common denominator is, is the problem that they need solved. It's as simple as that. It is. It is as simple as that. But, yeah, I would highly encourage you to dive down in there, have a customer interview with your, with your customers, finding out what they're struggling with, what they like, what they don't, what their passions are, what types of buying styles they have. And then when you find those commonalities, capitalize on it.

Right.

Shift that humanization of your brand marketing to those that type of person. All right, let's see what else we got in here in the questions. I love that you guys are introducing yourselves. That's awesome. Perfect. And if you guys have some questions you want to ask me verbally, please go ahead. They don't just have to be the ones that were dropped in the chat.

I'm going to kind of jumble a couple questions into one. So I'm kind of wondering as an. Obviously, it has a lot to do with the size space that you get, but what is a good way to determine how much inventory you would need starting out in a brick and mortar? We're not starting on an online presence. We're looking to open a brick and mortar. And around August of 2023ish. And I'm just kind of like, we're doing trainings and everything right now to make sure we're prepared. And I'm following the profit first module. And I'm having a hard time determining, determining how, like, much we should spend in rent versus how much we bring in. I did have a 60% sellout, so I did change that to 80, what you said. And I have 32% going to. I'm sorry, 38% going to OpEx, which kind of to me doesn't look like enough. So I'm not really quite sure how much I should expect for rent and initial inventory cost.

All right, great questions. Let me go into, Let me, Let me talk through something real high level.

Right?

So your first question was, how much inventory should I be bringing in? All right, so I will just say I like to do simple math. I am not a math whiz. But if I said to my, if my family and I sat down and said, okay, I'm going to do this business, right? Or if I'm a single person and I'm going to do this business, whatever it is, but I need to generate 40 grand a year. I need to generate 40 grand a year. Simple math tells me that I am going, my take home, my profit from a successful business should be 10%. So if I. So if I need to do 40 grand in a year, that tells me I need to do $400,000 worth of sales in a year. Okay, so then when that is, that's a, that's a quick way to just start. Start there and work your way backwards.

Right?

So if I'm going to do $400,000 in a year. That means I'm going to do X amount in a month. That means I'm going to do X amount in a week. Right. And in order to be reaching these goals, say if you're just going to do say say doing it at 50%, right? Say, say if I want to have $20,000 months, that means I am going to be selling $10,000 worth of product each month to bring in $20,000. Now I coach to a higher markup than that, but right now it's better for you just wrap your, your num yourself around a few numbers, right? You're not wrapping yourself around anything that's being written in stone. This is just very helpful for you.

To the profit as 15%. So I could mark that down for beginning to 10. And then I also have, I also have our monthly sales generating as possibly of a 14. But that's like a scary, that's a scary number to like think about. But then you just said 20 so it kind of made me feel a little bit better. Is do you think for a brick and mortal brick and mortar a 15 to 20,000 is definitely reachable like starting out 100%.

It depends on. Yeah, it depends, it depends on a lot of different things, right? Depends on how much what type of products you're selling. It depends on how many hours you're planning on being open. You know, you're, the questions that you're asking are great questions, but I would need a little bit more information because if you're opening a brick and mortar that's going to be open on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, it's not going to generate.

As much as someone who's open six to seven days a week.

It could, it could. Depending on your traffic flow, you could find that you don't generate sales Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Right. You could find that those are slower days. You could find. But, but it really, a lot of it is going to depend on how, what your effort is going to be, how many hours are you working, what is, you know, what is your traffic flow looking like, right? What are you planning on putting in there? Putting in a lot of $5 widgets that you're selling for $10. It, it you have to sell a lot more of those and you do forty dollar sweaters.

So we do having a three times markup.

Okay. But I was saying you have to sell a lot more $10 items quantity wise than you do retail $60 items. Right. So therefore that depends on how many customers you have as well. So there's A lot of different things that go into that. And we do get into that a lot more in our other deeper courses and in our, in our coaching calls and things like that. But for you, what I would say is do that math backwards. Look and think, what do I, what do I want to be bringing in? And then map that back down to the day. Like, what is that looking like for me each day? What are my goals be each day? And with the profit first, the way you have that divvied up, percentages wise, that's great. 10%, 15%, whichever way you want to do it. Yep, you bet. Let's see. Okay, Judy, somebody said they want cheaper. I want to address that real quick. If they want cheaper, that can be a very scary thing. Don't get. I encourage you as a boutique owner not to get caught in the they want cheaper because you know who else can do really cheap? The big box stores that buy incentive. A six pack of an item, they buy tens of thousands of an item, right? I mean, I would get so frustrated when I had my store and we rodeo all the time and we'd be traveling and I'd go into a floor Flying J Truck stop off of Interstate 80 and I walk in there and see brands that I bought on Fashion Go. I'm like, what in the heck? And you look in their price, their price way less than what I was pricing them at, right? So okay, there you go. The guy that wants it cheaper. Here you go. Come to the Flying J Truck stop off at a Des Moines, Iowa and you can get it cheaper. You know, you can go to Walmart, you can get it cheaper. So that meant to me I needed to fix, I needed to do something different, right? Cheaper is a, is a saturated market and I don't want to play the cheaper game because if I play the cheaper game, next thing you know, I can't have staff. Next thing you know, I don't decorate for Christmas. Next thing you know, I don't have good hangers. I have to use the plastic crappy hangers that Fashion Go sends me when they send me the stuff. If I go cheaper, I have to cut other things, which is ultimately taking one of the big Fs out of this. And that's fun, right? My experience, my customer is all about price. It is not about how it's making them feel. So yes, you will have customers. There will be people. I'm going to say that. There will be people that are going to say they want it cheaper. Well, guess what? Go find more people. There's people everywhere. The people that are going to nickel and dime you on price are not your people. They are. It does not matter. If you bring that thing down to $15, you bring down $15 today. Next month they might want it for 12. So you cannot keep a price motivated person happy. Let leave that up to leave that up to the discount. Debbie's. That is my thought. There's people out there everywhere. I used to, I used to work with a lot of clients with skincare and I loved one of their things they had said is somebody said, I can't find any customers. And the mentor goes, what did you run out of people that had skin? And here's just like, no, there's skin everywhere. And they're like, go find your new skin. Go find you somebody else. Right? There's people everywhere. And yes, I thought I knew who my customer was, but I think they've changed. And you guys, I can tell you our biggest business with our store was not necessarily the most fun customers that I sold to. Right? Or what. Let me back that up. I thought my most fun customers were going to be my 20 somethings, right? No, they were my big pain customers. My most fun customers in my store. You guys were my, my moms that their kids had left for college and they wanted to come in and talk and feel good about themselves and go out with their husband and show up on the town and still look like they had a place in society. Those were my most fun customers. So when I went to market, I had those customers in mind and they knew it. And I sourced the best products for them. And when they came through the door and I called them and said, hey, I've got a whole dressing room ready for you. And they came to the door, they knew that they were leaving feeling like a million dollars. Those were my most fun customers. They now, was it the best thing to do to go source those products at market? Did that motivate me and think, oh my gosh, these are the coolest, sexiest looking clothes I've ever bought? No, but they made my customer feel really good. It's. They were fun for them. They made them feel a certain way and it fixed the product problem for them and they paid me big money for that. Right when I walked into some of those vendor booths at market and that's on the tip sheet on the download that I gave you too about conversations to have with vendors. So I hope you, you guys utilize those next time you go to market. But if I just walked into Magic and went to the very first booth that was playing the biggest, loudest music and had the coolest, coolest looking displays. And the sexy shirts cut down to here with the, you know, the high waisted pants that everybody looked like, you know, models. And I brought that back to Lancaster, Wisconsin. My customers would be like, okay, so should I wear that to the sports bar for the Badger game or the Packer game? Because that's kind of what our social life's like here. And that's not really going to vibe. Right. So therefore, as cool as that was and fun as it would have been, that wasn't my people. So, yeah, your customers very well might change. Might change. How do you recover from doing these things, you're saying? I feel like I've been doing everything around Judy. Awesome. Okay, so how do you recover from this?

Slowly.

Right?

Slowly.

But go ahead and just two things, two things that you can do. Judy, I don't know if you're online or your brick and mortar. If you are still on and you want to unmute yourself and we want to talk through this. I welcome that. But a couple of things.

I'm online.

You're online. Okay. Judy, are you saying that you have products that you're, you're like dead zone products. They're not moving. Your customer is not buying them because they're the wrong product for your customer?

Yes.

Yep. Okay, perfect. So therefore, a couple of different things. Are you in the boutique hub?

No.

Nope.

Okay. We have an inventory exchange group in the hub where your products very well might mean be products for that another store might want. Right. So we have an inventory exchange group. That would be a good D stash area there. But something else is be variable about it. Like even go do a pop up shop where you think these customers, where you think these customers might be. Or reach out to other stores and say, hey, I've got some unsold inventory that is just killing me. It's not what my customers need. I need a fresh start. Or reach out to your accountant and say, where am I at book wise? Where, where am I? I have dead inventory. This inventory is not, is not what I need. I need to, I need to just move it out. It is not my customer. I made a mistake. Your accountant very well might say, you're positioned to write off X amount of dollars in inventory. Right. It'd be okay for you to take a donation. That. That's. It's yes or no.

Right?

That is not. I do, I don't recommend doing that with everything. But the next thing that I, that I find that there's most success in is just be very honest, right? Be very honest and say, look, we're shifting. I'm posting this. This is. This is all $5. This is going away. My loss is your gain and just own it. You know what the beautiful part of that is? You're going to move that product, but your customers are also gonna be like, heck yes, Judy is not going to be bringing in any more of this. She knows me and she's focusing on me and now she's cleaning house and I'm going to win for this.

This.

And also it personalizes and humanizes you that you know what, I make mistakes too, and I'm not afraid to admit it. And in this business, I'm more focused on you guys as my customer than me personally. So I don't know, Judy, how much. And if you want to take this call or talk chat separately on this, that's fine. But I don't know how many dollars you're talking about here. That in old inventory, that is, is not what your customers are needing. But a few other things that you can do is if there's pieces in there, you know, that can be mixed and matched with other items, like, like whether they're layering tops or they could be transition and you can drip these in and now your conversation has to change to make them something your new customers would want. I encourage you to, you know, look at that as an option to.

Some of them are more seasonal. I had opened in September and so some items were kind of summary. I live in South Texas, so it's still hot. It's like, well, today, but it's like 70 degrees, which is hot for some people. But so some of them are seasonal. Should I put some of those aside and bring them back out or just mark them down?

Well, a couple things. If they are still going to have a life, if you feel like they are still going to be viable, you can bring some of them back. Okay. It very well might be like, maybe. Do you do any paid marketing, paid advertisement, Facebook ads, anything like that?

Yes.

Okay. So it might be one of those things that, that you look and change up your audience a little bit. Right. If you. If you know that there's somebody else that might. A different area that might need something like that at this time, you could do that. But I look at it and we're into December already and I know stores even here in Wisconsin are going to be bringing in some spring goods for our February snowbirds that are going to be going away. So when those snowbirds come your way, you know, maybe that's the market that they're looking for. So depending on what your products are and who that market is, those are. Those are questions I can't answer without seeing it. You know, I'd leave that up to you. But if you still have, if there's still life in those products and it's up to you to re photograph it, re merchandise it, reshoot it, reintroduce it, layer it up different, make it new again. That's, that's. This is a part of Retail Bootcamp that we talk a lot about making your products new again, giving them life. I can. Oh, my God. That happens so many times in our store where we would have like a onesie twosie of something left and we'd go layered under a blazer or a cardigan, or we'd move it in the store and do something different with it. And our VIP customers that were in the store every week would come in and be like, oh, my gosh, is that new? I've never seen that before. You're like, literally has been here for a year. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Goodbye. You know, and then they buy the item and you're like, wow, that was. Didn't think that was going to happen, you know, so if, if the product is still viable, try to get as much life out of it as you can. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Somebody in the comments said I wasn't able to sign in to get the download. Will this be emailed after the webinar? Yes. Amy, you were on this webinar. You have the. Got the zoom link for the webinar. So you should get an email with the download and it's also in this chat. Okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt anybody. Somebody was going to ask a question.

How much is the, the. The event that you putting up on January it's free. Yep.

Challenge.

Yep.

Yep. It's. It's free. It's free. Yep.

Okay, thank you.

You bet. You'll. And look for information. We'll be. Will be. We'll be sending out all sorts of information about that that launches very soon as far as just the sign up. But it is free. Yep. January 3rd, that's coming up. Holy smokes. All right, Meg, thank you very much for the comment. Yeah, go ahead, Megan.

So I specialize in, like, Western. I'm a western inspired boutique, and I know that there is like a whole bunch of different types of western fashion, but how would you suggest standing out in a Market that is so oversaturated, but yet vendors don't really cater towards it that much yet.

Okay, so you are, you're more on that western side and you're trying to stand out and what you feel is like a saturated market with who?

Just everybody having the same thing. Since there's a lot of hard, I guess with buying inventory, a lot of the stuff's the same right now because only certain people can get stuff in. Or I guess customers want something that they saw from another boutique, and then it's hard for you to sell it because you get it in because you're asked to sell it, and then it doesn't sell well.

I guess just. I guess I saw that in a question here. Also. I forget who asked it. Like, they. One of the biggest, biggest struggles we have, guys, is that customer comes in says, oh, man, if you would have had it in green, I totally would have bought it in green. And you're like, yeah, let me. The, the. The rookie retailer runs in the back room or gets on the phone and immediately calls the vendors like, I need that green. The season boutique owner says, oh, really? Because green is not very popular this year. That's why we have it in. Da, da, da, da, da. So get it in whatever, you know. But yeah, that's kind of a kiss of death. And that, that, that's. That is hard to do. So I highly encourage you when a customer asks you to do, do that, understand that not only do you have to. To get that one item in green, you got to get six of them. So now you just have to. You have to have 11 new customers. Five or six for the color that you bought in, plus five more for the one that the other six that you get. And hopefully she does buy the one, and she probably is not. So ultimately, that's a risky business. But here's my thing on that. I am seeing in the western side of things, and I'm going to just go ahead and say we're being blessed right now with the, with the Yellowstone show, that western fashion is crossover, and it has been for years. And then when you take pop culture and you, you cross over artists, you know, that whole craze that they're not country, their country, their crossover country, whatever it is. That whole argument is the boutique owner's dream, because now it's up to you to take that crossover fashion and sell it to them as western. But it isn't right. It's, it's very, it's. It's a whole new look that you're taking and adding some, some, you know, some turquoise to or some, you know, silver jewelry to, or you're adding something to it and you're throwing a hat on or a different belt and it's western. That's how you're unique. You go ahead and think outside the box. Get away from what everybody else is seeing. Don't spend time just sourcing products. You know, everybody, everybody else is buying and think unique and think niche and get creative and crossover. Crossover. Crossover. You guys, when I had the store, I don't know if anybody knows the brand simply, but it is a very expensive line. It's a very expensive line. It's very mature, fitting. It is, it is beautiful. It is something you can literally run over with a car and it would come up looking amazing. And I sold that to some of our higher end western wear buyers or customers as western just because of how I accessorized it and what we did with it. So it can be done. It's just, I would encourage you to get creative as crossover. Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And how do you do that? Do you buy at Dallas?

I have gone once. I'm going again in January.

Okay. My tip on buying at Dallas for you is head straight to the 15th floor. Okay, head straight to the 15th floor. Because I promise you, 90% of the Western buyers don't ever make it all that way. Perfect. I shouldn't say 90%. That's. That might not be that high, but I know a lot of people that don't.

Thank you.

You back.

When is the retail boot camp? I think you only do that once a year. Correct.

Do it twice. It'll launch it. We will launch that the end of January start and it starts in February. I think our first coaching call for that is the very first part of February. So you'll start to see information being dripped out about retail bootcamp sign up. And once, once you have that, you have lifetime access to it. So like if you're on the call right now and you're a retail boot camp client, you know that you can join back in every, every semester. And the workbook's changing, the course, content is changing because it's a very alive course. And as the industry changes, we change the content.

Do you know how much it is or is it not out yet?

Nope.

I, I'm. It's 1997.

Okay.

And so. And there is a payment plan for it. You can break that up in three installments. But like I said, once you, once you are in, you're in for A. So as I always like to say, your cost per wear of the course is very low because, like, throughout a.

Year or six months, three months, you know how it's broken in?

Yep. It's for the 12. It's for six months.

Six months. Okay.

Thank you.

You bet. Yeah. I say it's like a cost of a good winter coat. Go ahead.

Is that per team or is that cost per person?

Per team.

Per.

Per account. Yep. So, Caleb, you want to buy it and give and have your manager go through it with you? You just. One person buys it. Yep.

Okay, perfect. I do have another question. Right now we're based online, and then we're also doing vendor events. So we have not made any sales online, but we are doing very well, I think in person. We are doing a lot of drawings to collect emails and things. It was helping at the beginning, but now we're not seeing any. What do I want to say?

We're.

We're not seeing any sales with that. Is there anything that you would recommend being in person to collect customers to get more sales flowing?

More sales flowing on your online site?

Yeah.

Nope. That's. No, absolutely. So getting their emails is really good. You do. I love QR codes. I like QR codes at your vendor events. They're super simple to create. You guys create a QR code straight to your website and encourage them to just scan that when you check out. Maybe you can put. If they scan it and they get that into their. Onto their phone, then you give them a discount. Don't have to do that. Put it in a business card. Put it in every bag that you hand out at market or. I'm sorry, at your vendor event, hand it out to customers. QR codes are really, really quick and easy through Covid. Everybody knows how to use them and you can create them free on online. So that's a really good way to do it. The other thing, giveaways and contests and all of those things, I think they. There's a lot out there. You just have to make it easy. There's. Yeah, easy and not getting lost in the weeds. But then the other thing, the other thing I highly encourage you to do is even if you did it once when you launched your site, go back, ask customers or ask your friends or ask random, your kids, teacher or whoever it is, say, hey, please just jump on my site. Go through it. I'll give you a discount. Or I'll give you a free T shirt or whatever. Just go through it and tell me where, where, where's it bad like, where's it not working?

Sure. Now with the QR code. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead with the QR code. Do you want it to be led straight to your website or to something specific?

That depends on you. If you're going to do it to something specific, you better have a lot of that inventory because here's the thing. Me to this navy blue silk shirt on a QR code. I fall in love with it. Maybe it's. You have it on a mannequin at a pop up and it's awesome. And then you give that qr code to 100 people and by the time I go to it, there's no stock in it. I, I'm, I bounce.

Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

Yep.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Hey, no problem. All right. How long does it take to be profitable? On average? I break even mainly because of Avenue shop fees and inventory buys, but I have only been going since August. Thank you. So Avenue Shops, just for everybody listening, Avenue Shops is, is a, is a drop shipper. And how long does it take to be profitable on average? That's, that's, that's tough. That is a really, really tough question. There's a lot of things that go into that, you know, like what type of volume are you doing? What are your other expenses? How much effort are you putting into it? And what exactly defines profitable to you as far as breaking even? One of the things I would highly encourage you guys to look at is look at your other expenses. Look at your other expenses that are the money going out in your business. And we coach to this, like I said, a lot more in the other sessions that we do, especially in retail boot camp. But so often we pride ourselves on knowing our number of sales, knowing what we have coming in. And we failed to fail to really analyze what money is going out. That money going out is what, why we're not being profitable. Right. If we, and this goes for your staff as well. If you had, you know, given crunch time, the biggest kiss of death is telling your staff we need to make more sales. We need to make more sales. You know, again, like, we need to. Sounds very stressful. That's that mindset again. That still goes back to what I was talking about in that number four mistake people make is that whole, I should. Right? It's just telling yourself you're not doing something. It's putting extra pressure on yourself. But the whole idea of we need to make more sales and, but also it's important to look at where is the hole in the bucket? Where's the money going out, right? Facebook ads. Facebook ads are just, they can be great. But holy smokes, I talk to stores all the time. They're spending thousands of dollars on Facebook ads. And when they say, well, they're not working, I say, well, why do you think they're not working? And then you go back and we look at them and they didn't have an audience to begin with. They didn't have a queued up audience. And they're sending out ads to just everybody, but they don't have that queued up ad or market and who they're really communicating to. So understanding our expenses and tracking those and when I say tracking them, that's why we put that in the boutique boss planner this year. If you guys have that, we put in there a whole spread of your expenses. So you can look at this over time. And this is where I'd encourage you, if you have staff to say, okay, you know, again, I'm going to use Heather as an example. Heather, where are we at in credit card fees? Heather, where are we at in utilities? Heather, where are we at with, where are we at with our, our store supply warehouse bill every month? Right? Where are we at with those supplies? Are we trending high, low? Is there something that we can cut there that's going to help us be more profitable? So there's a lot of different things that go into that. All right. Okay. One last question. And it's 11:30 and I'm. You guys, I know I've got to get back to work. And so do I. So is there a course or one on one session that can help figure out how your custom who your customers are? Yeah, absolutely not yet. No, I see it. I'm not sure who that is, but are you, are you a hub member? HB Are you a hub member? No. Okay, if you're hub member, we have, we have a whole module about this in our, in our training library. We also, we will go through this a lot more detail in our, in our best year yet challenge which is coming up in January. But ultimately this is something that we can help you with it in one on one coaching if that, if that is something you're interested in. But the high level part of this is really looking to see interviewing your customers. Quick way to start this right now, interview your customers, send out an email to your customers asking them some of their pain points. Right. And then learning from that information. Do you have to be a member? No, you don't have to be a member to join the best Year yet. Challenge. Nope, you don't have to. You will have access. Members have access to specific things throughout best year yet. But you don't have to be a member to join in on the zoom calls. But one of the things I highly encourage you guys to do is interview your customers, understand who they are, where they're at, what, what's making them frustrated right now. Insight on. All right. Hey, I see joined.

Yay.

All right, anybody else have a question? Megan says membership is so worth it though. Ladies. I appreciate that, Megan. We try time return.

Do you recommend a specific app for texting customers or what? What would you use? I guess.

Good question. Real good question. So as far as the marketing side of things, with text marketing, I think it's extremely powerful. Right? I think there's definitely a place there. We, we use Sentex here at the Hub. Slip Text is another really good one that we see stand behind. We have working relationships with both of them. Postscript. Those, those would be. Those would be our three that I would go. That I really encourage you to take a look at.

Can you, could you repeat those? I heard you kind of cut out a little bit.

Send. Text send. Yep. I can put it right here in the. I can put it in the chat.

Sorry.

No, you're fine. There you go. Oh, sorry. It wants to auto correct that first one. There you go.

Thank you.

You all right, guys, Well, I will jump off here, but please, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me and figure out what those three action items are going to be that you guys are really going to take action on. And I will call you out on those. Best year yet. And please, I would love it, I would really, really love it if you messaged me what those were going to be. You know why I think that would be so important and I hope you blow up my inbox. Go ahead and message me on Facebook. Friend me on Facebook, Message me there. I'm going to. That is me on Facebook, you guys. Please blow up my inbox, tell me what those three things are going to be. And the reason why I think that is so powerful is that is going to help me help you stay accountable for those things. And then also I know if you tell me that you are going to do this every day and you're every day thinking, holy crap, I better do this. Because you never know, Sarah might just randomly message me at 10 o' clock on a, a Monday saying, how's that going? How are those 10 things going? You're going to have to be accountable to say, oh, my gosh, Sarah, truthfully, blah. Or you're going to say, like a rock star. And I have decided that I don't like doing this, and that is not my thing. And at that point, then we can have this conversation about delegating. Maybe it's time to delegate, or maybe it's just time to close that vault and say, we're done. We're not doing it. There's power in all of it.

So.

We feel good. Can I get a thumbs up? Everybody with their camera on, Thumbs up. Feeling good about it. I like it. I like it. All right, well, for those of you guys that want to jump off, go ahead and jump off. And anybody again, that needs me for something, please, please, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You guys are very welcome. This. This is stuff I love to do. Okay, awesome.

Thank you, Sarah.

Thank you, Jackie. Thanks for being here. Good seeing you, Sarah. Thank you. Looking forward to the new year, Beth. Yes.

Beth.

Oh, my gosh. I'm looking forward to it as well. Good to see you. Merry Christmas. Any. Any update on the master class? What was that called? Mind. Master. Mastermind. The mastermind, actually. Yeah. Ashley and I were just talking more about it just the other day, so. And weirdly enough, Outer Banks continues to get thrown in the mix, so. I know, I know, I know. We're looking at the Nashville opportunity, too. Nashville in May? Yep. Yeah, you bet.

All right.

Open. You're on the list, though. So, sister, I promise, when we start talking about it, you'll get information about it. All right. As you know, I've been a little distracted the latter half of this year, so I wasn't sure if I missed it. Nope, not yet. Not yet. Okay. Not yet. All right.

Thank you.

You bet. Dallas market. There's one in. There's one in January and then again in March.

Hi, Sarah. Hi.

Hi.

Is the best questions to ask when looking for an accountant.

Ooh, Ask them if they know anything about retail. That's a big one.

Okay.

When you're looking at image, looking for an accountant, the big thing I'd urge you to ask is if you. If they know anything about retail because you want them to understand inventory. You want them to understand the needs of ebb and flows of inventory in your business throughout the calendar year.

Okay.

And where that falls on your. On your assets and liabilities, because that's a really big thing. So ultimately that if they understand retail and they can talk to you through the. What your inventory is as far as your assets within your business, they're, they're much better candidate. And if you do profit first, please make sure that they're a profit first accountant as well so they understand your different buckets as far as your accounts.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

You bet. You bet. And Carolyn. Yes. There's a recording that'll be emailed out to everybody as well.

For building wise. I wasn't sure if this. I've been calling Ryan. I know it's a little bit early. Just getting ideas of what they going to be my best route. And there's a brand new shopping center that just went up right by the school districts. A lot of our schools are on one road. So I found it really amazing that people who don't live in the area, like teachers, like there's going to be so much traffic through there. But because it's a new building, they actually reimburse you about $30,000 and you have to build the inside yourself ahead of time. But they said most of the time it normally costs double or triple. Is that an investment that's worth it to lose because you're renting so when you leave, you don't. If you happen to leave. You know, I don't know. I find it hard to like if you rent a home, you're not going to do much to it because you're renting.

Yeah, this is, this is a really good question. I like to think that rent should not be more than 10% of your income.

I love that.

Thank you.

That's a really good place to start another place. This is not answering your question directly, but I would look to your local community as far as Bounce Back grants. Right now there is Bounce Back grants all over the country for moving in brick and mortars into spaces that have not been accessed through Covid. So if this is, this particular thing might not fall in that bucket because it's brand new, but there's very well might be some money available. It's there through Bounce Back grants. That is something you could talk to your local chamber about, your local city administrator. But as far as is it a wise investment to build out a retail space on your own? If they're giving you 30 grand, that's nice. It's not going to cover a lot when you do build it out. I would be very specific with your landlord of where what is yours. If you're putting in the light fixtures. Are those. Can you take those? You'd be putting them permanently.

They said I had to do like electrical, the H vac, plumbing, all of it, like everything.

Yeah, yeah. That sounds risky to me.

Okay, that's what I thought. I just wanted to make sure I.

Wasn'T being until H vac system. You had me until the H VAC system and. Okay, that's where I might the starts rolling.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Beth, you overachiever. You already sent me your three things. That a girl. I love it. I love it. Megan did too. I'm seeing them rolling in. Perfect.

Are those grants able to be used for, like, if you wanted to do a mobile unit? That's what we're kind of leaning towards. Do you know.

Don't know that, Kayla? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I know I'm on our city council here in our community, and we've given out 10 bounce back grants, all $10,000 a piece within the last six months. And it's a huge thing to our community. I don't know that ours would work for mobile units. I believe our. The way ours are. And. But there very well might be grants out there for other things. But the bounce back ideally is to move somebody into a room. Retail space or into a space. Commercial space, I should say, that has not been utilized throughout Covid. So.

Okay.

It's encouraging to do that. Yeah.

Know of any grants or where we would go about finding grants for maybe mobile units or.

I don't for your. I'm not sure where you're located, but the number one resource for that is your chamber of commerce. Go to your city administrator and go to your chamber.

Okay, perfect.

And that is reason number 600 why you should be involved in your community. So when you walk in there, they know who you are and they're like, yeah, absolutely. Let me see what we can find to help you. Or even better yet, they see those grants come across and they call you and say, hey, hila, do you know you'd be eligible for this? Now, I'm not saying every chamber is like that. They should be like that, but that's. I would encourage you to start there.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. You bet.

All right. Okay.

My.

Okay, no problem. This whole thing has been recorded and so it is going to be emailed out. So I'm going to jump off actually now. So I do have another meeting I got to get ready for at noon, but I'm going to jump off the recording will. It will finalize whatever it's got to do in zoom. And then as soon as that's done, I will. We'll get that shared out to everybody.

All right.

All right. You guys send me your stuff. I can't wait to see it and help you guys track and be finding yourself in a much more successful, profitable mindset and business in 2022. Super pumped. Super pumped. Can't see what we're. I can't wait to see what all we're changing, so. It'll be good. It'll be good. All right, guys, have a blessed day. Bye. Bye.

Thank you.

You bet. Thanks.