Speaker: 00:00:00

Shopify square comments old you're about to start your boutique and you're wondering which

POS system do I choose this video?

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I'm gonna walk you through the pros and the cons whether you're opening online

brick-and-mortar pop-up mobile We're gonna kind of get into some of the nitty gritties and

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I'm gonna tell you what my personal Experience has been using some of these softwares for

the past five to eight years If it's your first time finding one of my videos.

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Hi, it's so good to meet you.

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My name is Emily Benson I'm a retail strategist and inventory expert

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I absolutely love talking about POS systems, which are also called point of sale systems.

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And I have worked with, I think almost all of them through working with over 15,000

clients who have start grown and scaled their boutique businesses within my ecosystem

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called Boutique Training Academy.

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So we're talking about point of sale systems.

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Point of sale is the literal place where someone checks out.

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whether it's on your website or whether it's in your store or whether it's at a pop-up

market where you're under a tent and you have to swipe on your card.

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I started my boutique the fashion truck in 2011 and we really had very few options for

mobile payment processing and now there's a bazillion choices and so I today am presenting

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you with some of the most popular and personally what I find to be the easiest to work

with.

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Now I'm going to preface all of this with no software is perfect.

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No uh reporting is perfect.

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There's glitches.

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There's always going to be issues and I'm sure I'm going to get people in the comments

giving you all the issues that happen to them, right?

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But what I will say is that for the purpose of starting a retail store, whether you decide

to be really big or stay kind of small, there are things that you want to think about when

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choosing this POS system because they all cost money to use and the various like choices

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of how much they cost to use is going to affect your bottom line.

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So it's an expense decision that you need to make.

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So I want to talk through the three biggest that I see most boutique owners and businesses

doing under like retail businesses doing under $1 million are starting out using and

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they're able to scale using these as well.

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At the end, I'm also going to give you some of the like key questions I would ask yourself

before you make that final choice.

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Okay, so.

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Let's talk about sort of the least known first.

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And I'm just going to say it's like the least known because it's a little bit niche and

that is comment sold.

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Comment sold was a platform that was developed out of the owners of discount divas.

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Now discount divas.

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every day was going live inside of a Facebook group and selling, I want to say like every

hour doing a sale of an item at a discount.

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And this was probably back in 2015, 2016, before we had a lot of systems that now again,

software systems are sort of built into some of these platforms.

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And so what they developed essentially was a point of sale system for

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someone who does live selling.

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So they use their phone to broadcast sales.

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And then what happens is someone comments sold, the word sold, with the number of the item

and maybe the size, some kind of coding system that is, you know, again programmed into

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comment sold, they type that in and an invoice for that item is automatically sent to the

shopper.

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Beautiful system like we love it solves a huge huge problem.

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Now over time how common sold has developed is that like it's become more robust.

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They have a lot more features.

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They have a lot more benefits and honestly if you are primarily a live seller where you

love to go on and be on video and be selling a lot do not hesitate.

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Please go use comments.

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they are the best in the biz at that being the best in class at the power of video means

that you're going to get benefits.

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So after you go live.

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Commentsold will clip out little pieces and segments of what you're selling and use that

as the video on the product page right there on your website, which is so cool.

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Commentsold also offers you an app to use.

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So you can have a branded app where people can shop in your app.

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You can go live in the app, right?

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So someone downloads your app.

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They're in your own ecosystem.

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You own everything in there.

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So there's so many really awesome benefits to using Commentsold.

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At the time of me making this,

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Comments all does actually have a brick and mortar option where you can have uh their POS

system in your store.

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I don't know a lot about it, but there is some flexibility in terms of being online and in

person.

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But mostly I would recommend comments sold to the person who absolutely loves live

broadcasting, live selling, like QVC style wants to do tick tock shop, like wants to be on

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screen on camera a lot.

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Common soul is going to be great for you.

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I would also recommend it.

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For anyone that has really a customer base that's great at apps, that like they wanna

download your app, they wanna get those push alerts, those are so great and there are

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customers out there, subsets of customers who love to use an app.

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Okay, so hopefully that gave you like a pretty clear who is this for for common sold.

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If you're new to Boutique Land, I wanna just let you know right here that I have a free

webinar.

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that's on demand that walks you through how to start a successful clothing boutique

business.

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So if you're in that state where you're like, listen, I really just need to know the most

up-to-date things.

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How am I gonna get started?

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This webinar is going to give you that exact plan.

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So all you have to do to get the on-demand access is type start below.

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We'll comment back with the link to sign up for the webinar.

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You type your email in and then we immediately give you access to that hour long webinar

and the 30 minute Q and A I did at the end.

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So please don't miss out on seeing that.

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To me, this is a no brainer.

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If you're starting, you're going to want more of this information.

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The two big elephants that always are going to stand out when you search what POS system

should I use are going to be Square and Shopify.

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Okay, those are the biggies.

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There are a lot of other ones.

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And again, I'm going to get comments down below that like, yes, there are other platforms,

but I have a lot of experience with Shopify and I have a pretty fair amount of experience

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with Square, not as much, but I think that that is because Square is actually pretty

simple.

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So what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of talk about both of them and the benefits

and like what you want to think about.

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I was describing this to my hair stylist and she was like, oh, okay.

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she's not in the business, but you know when I can explain it to anybody that's when I

know like I have an opinion on it, right?

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So here's my first take is if you're going to be mainly online, I feel strongly that

Shopify is the route to go.

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Why?

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Well, it is e-commerce based.

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So it was created to be e-commerce first and foremost, right?

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That's why it was created.

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Now it does have

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a brick and mortar and like a card swiping plan that is also included in it, right?

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So you can have in-person sales and it's great.

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But what I love about its online capabilities are that really there's no tech required to

get yourself started selling online.

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I think if you've been to my website shop boutique CEO dot com, like those are built on

Shopify.

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And I think it took me like maybe 45 minutes to get it fully up and done.

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Right.

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Like it's not hard.

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And there are so many tutorials on how to use Shopify.

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We actually include one in my boutique basics bootcamp course.

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It's all included, like how to get yourself set up on Shopify really quickly.

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And I love Shopify.

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because truly it's like what most e-commerce is built on.

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And so there is a familiarity with the customer who does shop online a lot.

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They've like shopped a Shopify site.

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You probably shopped a bunch of Shopify sites and maybe you didn't know it, but a lot of

the e-commerce world is built on Shopify.

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Now, let me dip over to Square for a minute because I think we have to talk about does

Square have the same e-commerce capabilities as Shopify?

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Like it does, but it's not really built for that.

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To me, Square was built for...

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an independent retailer like we you can go I think I don't know if you can still do this

but I think you can go to like a drugstore or a Best Buy and buy a Square reader and just

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start using it right away and that was the beauty of Square when it first came out it was

really a solution for people doing pop-up markets for you know again you could process

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things on your phone on a tablet like basically anything that you can plug this little

adapter swiper into you could take payment for which is amazing and when I had my mobile

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boutique it was so

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Like that was a helpful tool at that point, right?

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Because I could be out and about with, you know, a cell signal and take payment.

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So if you're doing pop-ups, if you're doing a brick and mortar, I really like Square.

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I think it's...

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so simple to use.

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The back end of it is just like the user interface is so simple and easy to find things.

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So if you're not super tech savvy, I do like Square because of its simplicity, because

it's really just meant to do in-person sales.

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Now again, it does have an online component.

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You can, you know, sell online through Square.

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I don't want to dissuade you if you're going to have a brick and mortar and then grow

online.

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Yeah, okay.

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You can like start with Square and then you

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can add the online component.

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But I think for the most part, what I would say is that if you are going to start off as a

brick and mortar or pop up, start with Square.

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It's very easy to use.

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Again, you can always switch over to Shopify.

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You can always switch back.

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That's honestly kind of the beauty of all of these systems is many of them either plug

into each other or they've already transferred tons of data back and forth.

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So like they can do it with you.

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So if you start off in Square, you're like, and this isn't for me.

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You like Shopify.

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Great.

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Just

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Literally, I think it's a couple buttons and it will just transfer everything over.

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And so, you know, don't get so overwhelmed with the idea of like, whatever I choose, it's

really going to make or break me you.

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It's not.

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But I will say, like, again, Shopify for me is really good for reporting.

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The square has really good reports, So.

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What you put into the system is what you're going to get out of the system.

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I think as a user, you have to be really careful as a new boutique owner to make sure

you're really entering that data.

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Again, like if you're just doing a random pop-up here and there and you're just quick

sailing everything, meaning like you're entering the price of something and swiping the

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card.

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Okay, like, okay, but that's not a long-term solution for growing and scaling a business.

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Okay.

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So when I say we love the reports, it's because what it spits out is

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selling data, it's inventory data that we can then use to project sales, to make plans to,

again, grow and scale your business.

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And Commentsold has reporting too.

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It's not always my favorite reporting, not gonna lie, Commentsold call me as always, but

Square and Shopify have some nice reports and they are easy to use.

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And I find that even if I can't get the exact right report, I can find something similar.

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What I will say is that all of these systems have more reporting and more data sets than

you'll ever probably need.

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And that's a good thing, really.

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In my opinion, the most important questions to ask, one, how am I going to operate?

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If you're going to operate mostly through live selling, come and sold.

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If you're going to operate mostly brick and mortar, pop-ups, square.

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If you're going to really operate primarily as an online e-commerce retailer, Shopify is

your choice.

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Next.

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question if you're still deciding is how tech savvy are you?

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Square is the simplest one to use.

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I'm just going to tell you that straight out.

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It has very easy drop down menus.

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It's easy to navigate.

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I just think it is.

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It's simple.

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So if you are not someone who's like really great with tech or understanding menus and

finding things like stick with Square.

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If you are a little bit more tech savvy, I love Shopify, especially if you're just gonna

be online because you can plug in loyalty programs.

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You could do drop shipping.

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You can do print on demand.

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Like there's basically all these apps that have been developed by software developers that

you can essentially plug into the back end of your Shopify and add extra features to the

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front of your Shopify.

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Now they all cost money and or you you're using their system.

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So again, it's like relying on other things to make your business work, but

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I'm not going to lie.

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All of my boutique calendars are printed on demand through an app from Lulu Direct that we

plug into a Shopify site.

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You guys order the calendar.

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It gets sent over to Lulu Direct.

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They say print, they print it, they ship it.

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I never really touch it.

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So how tech savvy are you is important to think about.

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And I would say for all of these, you don't need to hire someone to design it.

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You don't need to hire someone to do all this.

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You're here on YouTube.

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If you're good enough at finding me, you can find Shopify helpers.

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You can find square tutorials.

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Even those companies have a lot of tutorials.

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Common sold will even like give you an onboarding person to work with you and really walk

you through how to do that.

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And so you've got to remember that there are always resources out there that are free.

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I never want someone to say, well, I started my Shopify store and paid someone eight

thousand dollars to build it.

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And like, I don't know how to change it.

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I'm not opposed to having someone like build things for you.

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But as a business owner, you want to be able to like really fix and figure out most of

your business all the time because that's how you're able to pivot and be flexible.

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And you know, you've really got to understand what's going on behind the scenes.

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If you're really new and you're still navigating all of this stuff and you're like, I like

you, Emily, you've got some good ideas.

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I'd love to recommend that you sign up to my on-demand webinar called How to Start a

Successful

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Clothing boutique business, all you need to do to get access to it is comment start below

and we'll send you the link.

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When you get that link, you click it, you're going to put your email in and then you're

going to get immediate access to this one hour webinar where I walk you through what you

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need to do to get that boutique started.

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And I have a 30 minute Q &A as a bonus where I answer a bunch of people's questions and

I'm sure there's questions I'll answer that you have that you haven't even thought of yet.

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So.

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Hopefully this helps you pick a platform.

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Let me know down below if you still have questions or you want clarity or you wanna talk

it out, but thank you so much for being here.

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Here's to making lots of friends and making lots of money and I'll see you on the next

one.

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Bye.