854. How To Grow Your Brick-And-Mortar Business, Structure Your Week And Transition Into A CEO Mindset From A Hustling Entrepreneur With The Boutique Hub Founder Ashley Alderson

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So how do I just, like in little increments, start to hand off these entrepreneur mindsets so that I can live in the CEO mindset of my time is valuable and I have to create more time so that I can create more money.

Welcome to the Earn your Happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, Founder of Light Pink, bestselling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself to later becoming a multi millionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development and learned everything I could about business. Not by choice, but because I realized no, no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing. We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform. I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today I have Ashley Alderson on the podcast and and I'm so excited because she's not only the founder of Boutique Hub, which is so cool. I'm gonna tell you about it in a minute, but I am going to talk at her big event coming up and we will tell you all about it. So if you are somebody who's been thinking about starting a boutique, a brick and mortar, an online boutique, anything that has to do with a boutique or an online business, I'm telling you, you're gonna get massive, massive takeaways from this podcast. This woman has worked with so many different businesses. There is no way that you're not going to walk away with some serious value. So Ashley Alderson is the mom of three. She is a wife, founder of the Boutique Hub, cancer survivor, and host of the Boutique Chat podcast. The Boutique Hub is a media company focused on connecting and providing the latest tools and strategies to the global boutique community. Grounded in the spirit of community over competition, the movement of the Boutique Hub has landed in the top 10 fastest growing companies in the Midwest and featured in Inc. Forbes and entrepreneur Ashley's podcast Boutique Chat brings listeners conversations about the fashion industry, featuring retailers, boutiques, wholesale brands and vendors, and industry insiders to share the proven juicy secrets that have helped scale companies and have them rise to the top. You guys, I got so much out of this podcast for my business because the more businesses that you obviously work with, the more things you can learn and see coming. And this woman is a wealth of knowledge. Let's get started. Ashley, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me. I'm pumped to be here.

Oh my God. I'm way more pumped. So you're not going to beat me on that one. Okay, so I'm really excited because I love obviously talking to other business owners, but it's awesome because you are not just a business owner. You have a podcast, you do events, you help so many other people grow and scale their businesses as well. You just mentioned a little statistic to me of 50,000 different boutique owners are a part of your network. That's pretty freaking huge. I'm so excited to hear about your story and how everything started because I also love the field that you're in. I freaking love clothing. I love boutiques. I love small boutiques. I used to live in Santa Monica and there was like three on my street that I specifically, specifically only Shopton was obsessed. So I really cannot wait for you to share. I would love the origination story and then to what you're doing now. And you guys, real quick, I just wanna say that we connected because I was asked to speak at the Boutique Summit, which is coming up in, oh my God, like a month, which I bet you're feeling that right now we'll talk all about that. And one of the things I love to do is to really be able to talk to the founder and know the heart and the soul of why this started and who we're really talking to and who we're help. So I'm even more excited because it's going to help me so much. So anyway, thank you for coming on this show and we would love to hear all about the origination story.

You bet. Well, first of all, I'm so excited that you're coming to the Boutique Summit because I feel like we're so aligned on so many things and I know our community is going to love having you in person. So thank you for saying yes to that. There's going to be so many good things you guys will have to follow along all the. All the chaos of having a live event which you know very well about. But the origin story of the boutique hub. So California, you're talking about these beautiful boutiques. Right. I originally am from North Dakota, so boutique is probably not the first word you think of when you think of North Dakota.

Right.

And I grew up, even though, you know, being from North Dakota, being from a very small town, I grew up in a town of 1600 people, tiny. But I loved fashion, and more than fashion, I actually just loved business owners. I love people. I love strategy. I went to school for marketing, pr communication. Came out of school with an opportunity to do some traveling, actually related to the field of rodeo, which again, I'm probably throwing people all kinds of rain.

I literally, I need to know about that as well.

Through the opportunity, I was able to travel pretty extensively throughout the United States and found that I love boutiques like the ones that you're speaking of. But then I went back to North Dakota feeling like, man, where can I find stores like this? Like, local to me. And at that time, social media was really not yet a thing. And so I ended up getting a job in economic development. So I worked every day with small businesses, whether it was on Main street or at that time in North Dakota. We had this huge oil boom going on, which there was a lot of news about nationwide. So I worked politically, working with just how do we get that money back to local communities to start businesses? So my passion really is with business owners. But still in the back of my mind, it's always been, how do I find these boutiques? And so as everyone's journey unfolds, sometimes things kind of good things happen in bad situations. And so what happened for me was I grew up on a ranch. My dad, who was really the patriarch of our family, and our ranch passed away. When that happened, my husband and I realized, you know what? Life's so short. Let's take a journey. Let's go move to Wisconsin, which is where my husband's from originally.

I'm so sorry, pause. What part?

So we live in La Crosse. He's from Lancaster. We live in La Crosse.

Okay. We're literally going back this weekend to close on our Green Bay home on the water.

Okay, keep going.

No, I've been up to lacrosse so many times. Okay, keep going.

Okay, we're gonna. This is gonna lead down a lot of radical. So my husband and I decide we're gonna move back. We have two small kids at the time, decide we're gonna move back to Wisconsin, where he's from, and just take a move for his career, which led me to leave this job in economic development that I really did love. I love working with small business owners. So in that move, he's like, what do you want to do? Like, I've always had this idea. I've always wanted to build a place for people like me from the Midwest, really, who always felt like fashion was unattainable. Fashion felt like it was New York. It felt like it was la, but what about the rest of us? And to me, boutiques were the answer to that question. Boutiques were fashion for everybody, no matter where you lived. It gave you a piece of feeling independent and beautiful and confident and unique, no matter where you were. So I said, I've always wanted to build an online shopping mall of boutiques where everyone in the world can find these cute stores, no matter where they are, and shop them directly. And at that time, now social media is kind of up and running, and we're finding these cute stores online. So I hired a random web developer, started to build what, you know, originally was the boutique hub, was an online shopping mall of boutiques. And when I started to bring all these stores together in the hub, what I realized was they just needed a community. They needed a support system. They needed to answer questions on a daily basis. How do I run Facebook ads? How do I start with this brand new thing called social media? How do I actually sell online? That's a brand new concept. How do I buy more efficiently? Maybe they were formerly a teacher or a nurse or a stay at home mom, and now they've started a business and they have no resources. So the boutique of that time evolved from this online shopping maliboutiques, which was a Great concept, but really didn't fill the need. So we transitioned and really built what the boutique hub is today. And now we're the center of everywhere in the world. If you're a boutique owner, you can find the resources you need to grow on a daily basis and the communities to support you on the hub.

Oh my God.

Origin story.

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You know, I love this so much because at the end of the day, if it is boutiques, if it's what I'm doing with different cpg, with beverages, with skin care, with whatever you're interested in. It's funny because as I was writing this talk as well, and hearing you talk and what you do and what my husband and I do with different entrepreneurs too, it's all literally all the same on what you need. You need community. You need a place where you can all come together and share what is going on. You need to find those people who are sharing the same problems as you. Today I literally went to the gym with a friend and I was so grateful to have a friend who was also in business so we could talk about some of these problems that are coming up. Like, just to not feel alone sometimes is the number one thing that you need to keep going is just to know that you're not alone. So I love that you created this place for all of these people at once so that you could come together. Did you know how fast you were going to grow or tell me the trajectory of growing that business now? Tell me what that looked like as that started to grow and some of the problems that started to arise with that.

Yeah, Lori, the funny thing is I feel like sometimes the best things come from, like, the worst mistakes. For sure. What happened was there was kind of a big mistake right at the beginning. And that starts with I met a man on Twitter, which, like, if this story starts with that, you know it's going to be terrible. So I have this small town girl imposter syndrome. Like, who am I to build this thing? Like, yes, I know I can help these people, but I don't know how to build a business like this. You. No one talked about membership sites or course launches. Like, this was kind of early. This is 10 years ago before this was like a really popular thing to do. I just knew I was building a hub. So I'm just like who can I hire? Who can help me? And I met this guy on Twitter who I thought was going to be aligned with my values. And I thought he had the same idea I did. We decided we should team up, and I let this person influence a lot of what was happening. I let him change our business name. He told me he was going to take 51% of the company because he had so much more experience than I did. He started to get involved with my customer list and added to my bank accounts and PayPal accounts. And meanwhile, he's telling me, the papers from my attorney are coming. They're in the mail. We'd never met in person. We'd met on Zoom. We'd met on Slack, right? But I thought, like, oh, this is going to be a legit thing. And this goes on for months, and we're still, like, building and kind of rebuilding the Boutique Hub. We'd renamed the Boutique Hub at the time. And pretty soon, six months in, my husband and I were like, you know what? This is wrong. Like, something's off. We feel like we're getting catfished. We've got to put our foot down. So. So we call this gentleman and tell him, you know what? This deal's off. Like, these papers have never come. We feel like you're just taking advantage of us. He immediately hangs up on us, sends us an FU message, drains our bank account, blocks me from my entire customer list, my Facebook group that I created, all of it, gone. And so this is a little too, like, Midwest. Nice, because we're very trusting of everybody. We assume everyone have great intentions. So this transitions into, like, a period of me huddled up on the couch, like, oh, my gosh, I'm over with. How did I let this happen? And I have to give my husband so much credit because at that time, you know, he had a lot of pressure to be honest, from friends and family and people saying, what's Ashley even doing? She should get a real job. This isn't working. You've got these small kids, Eric, you're working so hard. Like, what is she doing? And he never questioned that in me. He always supported me. And so he came to me, and he's like, you know what? You have every right to be super angry, and you just take the time to do what you need to do, but you just need to decide, what do you want? And I'll support you in that. And I was like, okay, I hear you. So I just decided, it's sink or swim. I'm going to get up. I'm just Going to put one foot in front of the other. Screw this imposter syndrome. And who am I to create this? I'm just going to do what I think I need to do and that serve people. And so for free for the next year, I just gave value. I opened up an old Facebook group that I'd archived. I had about 300 boutique owners that I knew in it at the time, and I just started to serve them day after day after day. Meanwhile, this other person was still operating under my business name at the time. I had always had this dream of serving these boutique owners and then creating a large event which you are now coming to the Boutique Summit. Well, this person knew, and so they said, you know what? I'm going to create an event. So they sold tickets to an event, they promoted an event. This whole deal. The day before, everyone's like leaving to get on an airplane to go to this person's event under my former business name. They cancel it, don't give any refunds, and screw everybody who is lined up to go. And so all these boutique owners are like, oh, my gosh, like, we got catfished. I got catfished, they got catfished. And in this time when I was now just serving people and giving value for free over and over, I never chose to bad mouth this person. I never chose to publicly talk about what was happening. I just showed up, how can I serve you? And it's funny because we talk about karma and what goes around comes around. That was really karma for me because that person's true colors eventually shone through. And I think just by playing servant leadership, we were able to still build this community and really help people by doing it the right way and not by being focused on just building a business and making a profit and turning and burning at the end of the day. And I think today, like, anytime someone asks me about starting a business, to me that's what it comes back to. Like, why are you really doing this? What is the real purpose? Because if it's for profit, there's going to come a time where you may just crash and burn and not have a way to really show up and serve people and be successful in the right way.

Oh, my God. I don't have that type of story, but I definitely have stories like that. And I think it's so important for people to hear because I don't know one person who has escaped stories like that and where a lot of people stop. I'm sure, you know, working with so many people is something like that will happen and they'll think, how did I let this happen? I'm not the person who can see this through. I don't know how I'm gonna do this. We're good people. So what happens is that we take other people for good people. And then you have something like this and it just makes you open your eyes a little bit more and it makes you say, okay, this would have happened to anybody who wants to see good in people. But it does make you better. It makes you smarter, it makes you stronger, it makes you realize, hey, I'm gonna maybe wait a year before I enter into partnership to figure out what my business even is and what I'm capable of and what I'm not. So I love that you do this for people because when you start a business, it is so beautiful to be naive. Like you said, because that is why you start a business, is how you keep going is not necessarily knowing all the problems that are coming, but giving people a place where you do get to learn how to navigate these problems. So who is Boutique Hub for? So exactly who is that for and what are like some of the main things that you really cover and help people with?

So the boutique Hub today is for any small business retailer and that could be a brick and mortar retailer no matter if you're selling apparel, home goods, shoes, jewelry, whatever e commerce businesses. So if you're selling online, if you're doing comments, selling that sort of thing and at any range. So we help everyone from a brand new boutique owner retailer to a multi, multi million dollar boutique owner retailer inside. What we really try to give people, number one, is community. The best community by niche at your level. So if you're a multimillion dollar business owner, that's who you're spending time with on a daily basis. Or if you're new and you need more support, that's who you're spending with time with on a daily basis. And then in terms of resources, all types of education, from inventory to merchandising to social media, paid ads, all of that, whether that's online through our training library or courses, that sort of thing, or in person through the Boutique Summit. And then we also offer wholesale support for retailers as well. So we built a wholesale platform called Hubventory where retailers can shop from brands from around the world to stock their stores immediately and vetted brands that they can trust. I think that's really important to note and it's easy to build a community of people and just kind of let anyone and everyone be a part of it. But I think There's a lot of value in being highly curated and in having the right people in your community and making sure they're vetted in your community.

That's so good. So tell me about some of the main things that you see. We'll start with beginners. What are some of the main problems, challenges that you see in business but then also in personally with the actual owner. With the actual business owner. So the problems in the business, but then also personally, what do you see that you have to overcome in the very beginning?

Yeah. So let's talk about business problems first. Beginners. And that I think right away, and this is every business, I think everyone has to really get over that hump of who's my customer? How do I buy inventory for that customer, how do I know how much inventory to buy for that customer? How do I know? Retail is such a turn and burn cycle. So you kind of have to get over this hump in business of being okay to fail. Like I bought this stuff and no one bought it. Now what do I do? How do I get my money back out of it and reinvest in something that will work? So I think those are real true business struggles. Who's my customer? How do I buy for them? And then how do I reach them online? And that's every business. How do I really get through the noise on social media to build a relationship with my customers? So it's not just about me selling them a product. Let me providing value, filling a need, having a solution, all of that. And it can be so overwhelming to try to tackle all those steps for a new business owner. And then personally I think for a new business owner, we get lost in this trap of I call it CEO versus entrepreneur mindset. We all start as entrepreneurs and we are hustling for our worth and we're diying and we're saving our way to success. But it's so easy to burn ourselves out because at that stage we don't realize we have to invest in time so that we can scale, so that we can grow, so we can ask for help, all those things. So we just take so much on ourselves. It's so easy to burn out when you're a brand new business owner.

Is there a certain point where for boutiques, I'm not sure how the business model is set up, but is there a point where you know to tell people to either bring on a CEO or how do you help people understand what their skill set is within that business?

So that's a really good question. And I Don't think it's that you have to bring on a CEO. I think it's understanding your mindset and where you're at. So I think about it like this. Money in this world is abundant. There's ample money in this world to go around. When you go to the grocery store and you walk down the bread aisle and the wine aisle, you're like, how is it possible that there's this many options? Right? Obviously there's enough to go around for everybody. But the one thing that we don't have limited or unlimited access to is time. So when you're making the switch from I'm a hustling entrepreneur to I'm a CEO, it's understanding that money's available, time isn't. So how do I spend my time to create more time? How do I build that scale so we start to value things like systems and processes and seeing ourselves doing income generating activities every single day, right? Knowing the difference between rocks and sand, all these analogies that we're familiar with. US as CEOs working on hundred dollar an hour jobs versus ten dollars an hour jobs. And it's putting ourselves in that mindset so that every day when we look at our to do list, we say, okay, is this something I can tackle today or is this somewhere I can ask for help? Is this somewhere I can outsource? Is this somewhere I can invest $10 with someone else doing this task so that I can focus on the income generating activity that's going to make me $100 an hour? So how do I just, like in little increments, start to hand off these entrepreneur mindsets so that I can live in the CEO mindset of my time is valuable and I have to create more time so that I can create more money.

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I think one of the biggest things that we do is we just get into these things that we are not good at and we spend all of our time there and all of our energy. And I know that I have done this multiple times where I will burn myself out and I'm not actually doing the best thing for the company. When you really dial it in and you know what you're good at and then you can eventually hire out for what you're doing, not good at, and what you're wasting time doing.

We always say, do what you do best and hire the rest.

Oh, so good.

Because it's easy to become the bottleneck of your business when you're an entrepreneur mindset and you're a control freak and you think, nobody can do this as good as I can. Like, that should be a trigger to you. Oh, that's the hustler in me. That's the entrepreneur in me. But the CEO would say, do what you do best and hire the rest.

Oh my God. I literally have to. My husband will say it to me too. Like, are you acting as a CEO right now? And I'm like, hold on, let me really think about that. No, I'm not, like, at. Okay, where is the breakdown personally in everything that you've done and created? I'm sure that you talk about this all the time with your people or within your team. What are some of the fundamentals that you have to teach personally, as in like personal development and supporting the actual business owner? Where is the breakdown on a human level with that business owner? Like, where do they usually need support the most?

I think about the evolution of supporting boutiques. Everything comes back to obviously business fundamentals. First, productivity and mindset. Everything else we can get a handle on. We can get a grip on accounting and finances and inventory investment and social media, team management. We can do all that. But if we don't have productivity and the right, like, CEO mindset to begin with, everything else falls flat. So to answer your question, let me go here, I have a strategy for productivity that I think every business owner can use. And whether you're a boutique owner or not, hope this is helpful to you. But I think about how Do I structure my week to get more done so that I can have more balance and actually like be in my zone of genius on a daily basis? So we call this our four part to do list. We created this, we built day planners around this for boutique owners, the whole kit and caboodle. But it comes basically down to this list number one is what do we need to do every single week to operate the business every single week. So whether that's inventory of your boutique, or it's social media, or it's certain meetings, all those things, right? And then on a personal level, it's working out. It's my time boundary. When am I done working for the day? When are my date night? What are all the personal activities I'm not willing to give up? For me, our kids play basketball, we rodeo, we have horses, all that. So like those are hard boundaries. That's my list number one. Every single week list. My list number two is what are my big rocks this week? So what are the few most important things that I can accomplish this week that are actually moving the needle? The income generating activities, the CEO mindset that this is most important right now, not answering emails, not busy work, but actually moving the needle List number three is my later list. So if it's not important enough to be on this week's list number two, it's for later. So I put it on Trello, I set it and I forget it. If I wake up at 2am and I have anxiety, which I think most business owners probably do, I write it on a piece of paper and I put it on my later list so it's safe, but it's not swirling around and it's not me. With like the never ending to do list, it has to be really short. List number four is what can I outsource, where can I ask for help? Or what can I say no to? So every week, if we can go through those four lists and really discern all the things that are floating around our headspace and put them in those four categories, here's what I do with them. List number one, whether you're solo, this is just you doing it on your own calendar, or if you have a team, we strategize this with our whole team. So our company is operating just in batch creation. So we just time block list number one, which time blocking is no new thing. It's been around. I'm sure most of you probably do it. But the way I approach time blocking is just looking at where's my personal boundary, how am I putting that on my plate first, where's my tiger time? My most productive zone of genius, where is that? Getting blocked out. So for me, it's eight to 10 every morning. I don't take any meetings. It's just being productive. And then everything else. On what days do I do social media batch content creation? On what days am I working with vendors? On what days are we doing photo shoot? Whatever the rest of your week looks like. So batch creating, that and time blocking. List number one in my list number two, I take that into my calendar, into my, as I said, tiger time. I think that's an Amy Porterfield thing. But for me, eight to 10 every morning, that's when list number two gets accomplished every day. List number three, I don't have to do anything with. It's on Trello. I'm just like holding it there for later. And then list number four, I look at that list every week. And going back to your walks with Chris, where am I the bottleneck? What do I need to say no to? Where do I need to ask for help? And I find, especially as women, it's so easy to just say yes to everything that where can I look at and really ask myself the hard question of if I'm saying yes to this, this week, effectively I'm saying no to something else. So what am I willing to give up? What am I willing? Is there a meeting I can get rid of? Is there an event or something that just doesn't really need to happen, that's not moving the needle or what can I eliminate from my plate this week? I feel like once I've gone through that like three, four weeks, I test out that four part to do list to really get a good flow. And now that helps me to create so much more, just flow in my day to day. And I'm a lot happier because I find I'm doing the things I want to do. I'm doing the things that are effective. And we're raising a team of leaders around us that support us so you don't feel like everything is just on your shoulders.

That is so powerful. There's a couple things on here that I'm actually trying to figure out right now. So that was really, really helpful. But if it's not in the calendar, you won't get it done. And it is crazy how I'm like, no, no, I've got it on the list or I'm gonna fit that in. And that's really important to me. But if it's not actually scheduled into my calendar, I Tend to not do it. And it just gets buried in another to do list. And there are so many things I think this is really helpful for everybody to hear of. Like, really categorizing what the most important things are that you need to do every week to move the business forward. Because I can tell you, I have been in the past the queen of letting things that pop up, all those little things that you think are important, but they're not important.

Everything's important. Nothing's important. It's so easy to fall into that trap.

Oh, my gosh. One of the things that I've adopted into my brain, I can't remember where I heard it. I think it was on How I Built this. And Reid Tracy was talking about letting fires burn. He's like, you have to know what fires you have to let burn, and they're going to be burning all the time. And I was like, oh, it's so hard to grasp, like, knowing that you literally, as a business owner, founder, CEO, you have to live your weekly life and you're letting fires burn. Like, oh, oh, well, okay, well, we know that one's not gonna get too big. Like, that's just a small brush fire over there that we think is contained, but we gotta let that shit burn over there. It's fine. And then you have to know what's gonna, you know, be the most important. Top plate. So, okay, I would love to know. What do you wish more people knew about you?

You know what? You know what? Something that I like about myself is that I could have an entire conversation in movie quotes. I love that.

Oh, my God. You and my brother in law. Like, I literally, I wish I could. Like, I wish I was like you because I think I'd be even funnier, but I can't. I can't remember movie quotes. I love that. And can't wait to hear you have a conversation without me giving you quotes back. But I'll hold space for you doing it.

Our team, they're, they're used to it. I'll drop like a random Will Ferrell and they just think I'm weird or like a Saturday Night Live quote. And they don't.

Oh, my God, I love it. My brother in law speaks in movie quotes. So I'm always like, I wish I could do that because you're hilarious. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I love that. What is something that you wish more business owners knew?

There's a lot of really technical things I would say right now, but this is going to be so basic. It goes back to like learning through the failures that we face. And that for me started with imposter syndrome because I thought based on who I was or how I was raised or where I was from, that somehow was going to define what was going to happen to me. What's on going school I went to. Like, it doesn't matter. None of that matters. Like if you have an idea, if you have a way to serve people, if you have something you want to do or be or create, just do it. All the answers are there. Everything you need to do and everything you need to know is either within you or it's a Google click away. There is literally no boundary that can stop you. And I think about this a lot now. Having kids that are in middle school. And my daughter and I were having this talk last night, she was talking about mid quarter grades and she's someone who has struggled to read her whole life and just school hasn't come easy for her. And I say, you know what, there's a lot of people who are going to put pressure on you saying you have to have straight A's. Hadley, you have to perform in school. Hadley. And I'm like, you know what? You don't, you don't. There's so many successful people that did not do well in school. So you have the gifts inside of you that are going to help you create whatever you are meant to create, regardless of what the world tells you you should or could or have to be. So super basic. But truly, if you need to do something, if you want to, you can.

Oh, I love that. I mean, I wish I could have gotten that advice years and years ago. So that's really powerful. Why do you think people need to go for their big dream?

Because I think that a life without dreaming and without purpose, it's really boring. It's really boring. If we're just comfortable, if this is just how it's meant to be, what are we living for? You have to have something that's pushing you to be better, some goal to work toward. I think a lot of our happiness is really based in seeing progress in ourselves and in the world around us.

This is something that I think is so important for people to hear because without challenges, there isn't actually a place for us to show up every day as founders, as business owners. It would just be like, great, I'm selling a ton of clothes and making millions of dollars. This is fantastic. How wonderful. But tell me about your theory on facing challenges, how to go about them because they're every single day so how do you start to look at challenges in a way that doesn't make you feel defeated as a business owner?

Well, first, I would say if you want to make millions of dollars, selling clothes is probably not the best way to go about it real quick because it's a real hard business, and most businesses are that way. It looks great online. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors that make things look a lot easier than they are. And every single one of us is going to have challenges. But the way I look at it is this. I often think about that question, is this happening to me or for me? I mentioned to you earlier, Lori, that my dad passed away from cancer, but that was after I also had been diagnosed with cancer. So the week before my 21st birthday, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. And that whole experience, the way that I look at it, it's a long story, but the way I look at it was a huge opportunity and a huge blessing because that was really the first time that my mind was open to a different way of thinking, a different way of looking at, okay, is this happening to me or is this happening for me? And I feel like what came from that situation was the answer to that question, and that is that something good comes from every bad situation if you choose to. To look for it. But you have to choose. And so often, I think our world today has made it really easy to be the victim. Like, we've all adopted this victim woe is me mentality. Let me get on my keyboard and tell you why you're wrong and why this is such an awful place. But that's not true. Like, there's opportunity in every bad situation if we simply choose to look for it, but we have to search for that within.

Oh, thank you for sharing that. And that's so beautiful. And I share that same outlook with you, and it's really powerful. It's kind of the only way through coming to that conclusion for you. What is something that you personally are working through right now? Like, what are some of the places that you feel personally challenged in your. Whether it's your life and business, they kind of all meld together.

I am working through having a really busy business and having growing kids and a marriage, and I hate the word balance. I think it's just total bs. Like, it's not real. There's what I can do today to best manage all the balls that I'm juggling, right? And which balls are glass today and which balls are rubber today. So my 2am anxiety hour often revolves around, am I a bad mom? Am I being a bad wife? Why is this house so dirty? But it's just accepting the moment that I'm in and knowing that it's okay. Like, if these things don't get done in the business today, if we don't hit that deadline, there has to be enough leeway because I know I'm spending that time with the kids and I can never get that back. I'm just really trying to relish every moment I have with our family because I feel like time is going so fast.

That's beautiful. Especially when you lose someone. I think it just makes you say, you wanna make sure that everything you're doing is worth it. And once in a while you can be like, what am I doing with this business and why am I spending so much time on it? But at the same time, and I think this is a question just with where I'm at as well in my business is your business is usually so attached to your life purpose, but then also you want to be a great mom and you want to make sure that you're there, but you also want to show them, like, you can do anything and you can have this business and you can work through that. Do you have a place for yourself where you are able to discuss with other business owners, you know, things that you're going through, or trying to make sure that you're present in your business and present for your family? Like, how do you support you, the human, as the business owner, as the mother, as the wife? Do you have a place that you go? Have you created a spot for yourself to support yourself in that?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Sometimes there's masterminds and things to be a part of that are beneficial. And sometimes I find that Eric and I try to date other couples. If that sounds weird, we recently moved to lacrosse. We were in another community in Wisconsin before this. We moved the week the world shut down, which is really odd. So we've been here for about two years and we didn't know anyone when we moved here. We don't have any family here. Nothing. It's just us. So we try to date other people to find other business owners that see the world the way that we do. And if we don't always find someone here, we make it a point with the couples we know, we really do resonate with to travel with them. So if it's escaping the winter in Wisconsin and going somewhere warm for a while just to talk openly about those struggles, we do try to do that. I feel like I answered that real janky with like three different things. But you just have to seek it out. Right. There's old friends, maintenance friends and growth friends. And how do we spend as much time with growth friends as we possibly can who understand where we're at and where we're going?

I feel like that's exactly where Chris and I are and where I am too. I try to find other people that are going through the same thing so we can at least discuss it and be together in that conversation. That's so huge, by the way. I'm like, oh my gosh, you guys have to come over in the summertime. That'll be so much fun. We like don't really know too many people back there either, so. Yeah, we just have family back there. Okay, so as far as Boutique Summit now getting this big vision of getting all of these people together, why do people come to the summit? What do you want them to leave with?

You can learn all kinds of things online. It's wonderful, it's great, it's abundant. But there is something totally different about being in person and sharing energy and sharing space and having face to face time that I think is so long lasting and so powerful. And so to me, like that's what the summit is. It is so powerful to share the room with people just like you and to see people who maybe you've already met online slightly, maybe people you look up to big time. Whether that's a fellow boutique owner or it's you, or it's Jesse Itzler who's going to be on the stage. All levels. But it's just so different being in person than being online. So I want people to leave completely inspired, motivated, fed. I'm not a big fan of fluff. Like I'm all about, like, what is the strategy? How do I do this step by step? How am I going to go home and make this a new revenue stream for me or increase my business by 100 grand? Like, how can I do that from the things I'm going to learn from this event? So strategy, inspiration and some new friends as well.

So exciting. There's nothing for me like being in person. I can honestly tell you that my biggest breakthroughs have come from being in person. It's not that I haven't had breakthroughs along the way, but like the really big ones is because I have either seen somebody who's been permission for me that I can do it too. There's something magical about being in that room and I promise you, if you go like the person that you're sitting next to, if you actually ask them a question, would be somebody that you were meant to sit next to. Like it is that magical. It's literally mind blowing to me, which is why I'm so excited whenever I'm in rooms like that. Because my biggest breakthroughs all came from going to events and connecting with other like minded people. So I love that you have this specifically for this particular business as well. So couple last questions. What is a belief that you have had to let go of in order to become the woman that you are today? And what is the new belief that replaced it?

So when I was younger, grew up on this ranch, farm and ranch, right? Money was not abundant. We didn't have much of anything. And I think in order to make that okay in my parents mind, we were raised with this belief that money is the root of all evil. Only the rich get richer, right? So money became a negative thing. And so when I started the business, I was so scared to make money because I thought it would make me a bad person. And that screwed up a lot of stuff for a long time. And now what I have really found to be true, and I actually recently was home visiting my family and one of my sisters said, oh, money's rid of all evil, like go figure. And she was kind of like dissing someone. I was like, pause. This is the new belief I want you to walk away with. And that is that money is a mirror. It's amoral. It's neither good nor bad. It is a reflection of who you are. So it could be like a brick. You could take a brick and you could build a beautiful cathedral with it. Look at all the good you could do with that. Or you could take the brick and you could smash it through the window of a beautiful cathedral and look at the damage you could do with that. But it's a reflection of who you are. So I just think there is a new way to live abundantly with money in a way to really support and help a lot of people and not feel shame around being successful.

Amen. That is one of the beliefs I've had to work through. I've heard those exact phrases. I was raised in a really religious family. I heard it over and over. And it was very stifling in the beginning because I'm sure just like you, I can imagine that you rejected it. You couldn't hold onto it, you'd run from it. Even though it was like great opportunities or whatever that looks like you don't realize that you're sabotaging yourself in so many different ways. So, yeah, I completely understand. And money, you know, just like you said, and that was such a beautiful analogy. There's so much energy behind it and it creates such beautiful foundations and you're able to do so many impactful things with it and make huge change. And that's why I love also what you're doing with this event is bringing that up as well and showing different people who are successful in saying, what could money do in the hands of the right people? I think when women get money, we do incredible things. We hire a lot of amazing people, we create a lot of income for families, we give back, we create other amazing products. And I think that that is a message I find, especially for women, that is really, really important because sometimes we can think it's bad or reject it, or sometimes people will say things like, oh, she's just in it for the money. And when I hear that, I'm like, yes, I am. Because money is powerful and we can help people with money. So it's really important to understand, just like you said, what you're able to do with money. So at the Boutique Hub, I know that you talk about so many different topics, but can you just break that down one more time of all of the things that you go over there?

Yeah. So at the Boutique Summit, we'll try to cover every area of business from mindsets to business foundations to inventory to SEO and Facebook ads, social media, Instagram. I'll talk a lot about actually personally. I'll talk a lot about marketing and what's changing in 2022. And also just world economics, what's happening with supply chains and how is that impacting all of us as being in retail and having to deal with a product based business, but also just financially and hiring people and growing a team and HR issues that have, you know, kind of risen in the last year. So we try to touch a little bit on every aspect of business, something for beginners, but also we try to have a lot for advanced store owners as well.

Amazing. What do you want for this podcast? What do you want people to know? What would you like to add?

I think we covered so much, but I think back to your point of being successful and not running away from money or just like some of those mindset things, I also want to hit on just like what noble thing it is when you are able to grow a business and employ other people. I think sometimes we look at money as a way to be charitable, but to me, it's also really important to note that when you're successful and you grow a business, employing people empowers them on a whole new level than handing them something for free. So just what does that mean today to employ people and give people stability and not just a job, but a job that they love and a job that they're empowered by and that they can grow with. So definitely new ways of looking at money and employment and opportunity and the reasons that we're in business in the first place. Really important.

Oh, my goodness, yes. I feel that so strongly. Okay, I'm going to get this podcast out soon. So with that said, if people are interested, if they're in the very beginning phases, I feel like I've actually had a lot of people say that they love clothes, they would love to start a boutique, they'd love to start an online boutique, something like that. Is this event for them? And how can they go to the Boutique Hub and maybe get support on that? Tell me all of the things. So where could we get our ticket if we want to go to the Summit? What are the dates? And then also, if we're not going to go to the Summit, what does it look like to join the Boutique Hub?

Absolutely. So, first things first, I would just send everyone right to our homepage. It's the boutiquehub.com everything you need to know about either joining the Boutique Hub as a member of our online community and all the resources or coming to the Boutique Summit is all there@theboutiquehub.com the Boutique Summit is March 20th and 21st in Dallas, Texas. It's during a Dallas apparel market. So if you are coming, you can buy inventory at the same time you come to the Summit. But I would also just invite you if you want to kind of get a little bit more of a flavor of what we do. We have a podcast called Boutique Chat that's also a great way just to hear from fellow boutique owners of all shapes and sizes from around the world and what works from them. So connect with them there or us on Instagram at any time at the Boutique Hub.

Amazing. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to speak there. I'm so excited to be in it with everybody and be around all the business owners and around all the clothes. I'm, like, very excited because of the inspiration. And honestly, I can't even just from talking to you and talking to so many other business owners, there's so much crossover that no matter what, I get to also hear and learn from everyone, and this has been such a great conversation with you, and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge. At the end of the day, we're all in it together, and there's so much that we can learn from different industries. So I absolutely love that you're doing this for people. So thank you so much for coming on the show. You guys definitely go to the website, go find her, go follow her, and I'm so inspired by what you do, so thank you so much for coming on.

Oh, man. Thank you so much for having me, and I cannot wait to have you in person. Thank you for being the light that you are.

Oh, thank you so much. And you guys, the biggest thing that you can do is to go tag her on your Instagram stories. I know you like to share these podcasts, so go share it in your stories. Give her a tag egg and let her know what your biggest takeaway was from this podcast. That is always one of the biggest gifts that we can give our guests so they can also see your face and know the impact that they made. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everybody.

Sam.