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If you've landed on this video, most likely you have a boutique or retail business and you're kind of wondering where you fit in the spectrum. Like at what point do you get to what point? Well, in this video, I'm going to talk you through how to understand where you exist in all of boutique land and how to move to the next level. So this is kind of like, you know, how to hack the boutique land game.

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Stay tuned. If we haven't met yet.

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Hi, I'm Emily Benson and I'm a boutique consultant. I'm the founder of boutique training Academy where I teach you professional level retail fundamentals. These are the things that I've learned for over 20 years in my own personal experience and helping clients. So when I've compiled this information for this video. The most important thing for you to know is it's not something I just made up, even though it kind of is, but it's something that is based on 15,000 clients coming through my doors and seeing what their numbers are, what their struggles are, what their wins are. And compiling all of that to give you, hopefully, a better map of where you are on the spectrum. In terms of, did you just start out? Are you more experienced? How much debt do you have? How much profit do you make? All of that can be put into our Boutique Land Matrix. Here it is right here.

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So as you can see, there's four quadrants to the matrix.

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The way we like to think about it is where's your profit versus where's your debt?

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So comparing how much profit you make to how much debt you have, okay? Let's start off with like, What is the most successful boutique you've ever seen, Emily?

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It depends on what success means for you. For some of my clients, it means more time with friends and family. For some of them, it means making millions of dollars, okay? And you can also actually kind of have both. It just depends on how much time and energy and hard work you want to put in. I love the saying, choose your hard, because it really makes sense. Choose your heart. Do you want to grow and scale a business and commit a ton of time at this stage in your life even though that's hard? If you commit the time now, will you have a legacy business for a long time? Maybe. Or maybe you want to put in a medium amount of heart and what's hard is juggling your schedule, juggling the calendar, juggling the money. That's okay too. So in terms of success, The biggest thing for me is what does success look like for you? How much is enough? What is enough? Time commitment, money commitment, all of that stuff.

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I would love to hear from you down in the comments below.

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What does success in your boutique or retail business mean for you? What does that look like, What does that feel like, I want to see different perspectives because I think for a lot of people, You just think it's always about money. But I think if you go a level deeper or like more layers into why you want to have a boutique business, what that looks like for you and your lifestyle, it actually might mean more time with your kids, more time to travel, more money to donate to charity. Like what are those things that really are important to you that you want your boutique boutique to help you afford in life, whether that is time or money. Some of the most successful boutique owners I know are the ones who are like an appropriate level of scared and calm at the same time. They're scared because they're making big jumps or they're challenging themselves from a mindset or money perspective, but they're also confident in what they're doing because they're calm in their branding, they're calm in their business, they're calm in their financials, they know what's going on. And so their decisions, while they might be scary, like getting a new warehouse or starting to run Facebook ads, all of those things that cost time money, right? Like we're investing more in our business, they're all based on data, and they're based on projections. So at the end of the day, like these successful boutique owners are calm because they know what's going on and that calm allows them to have some moments of being nervous or being scared because it's based in the data. To me, that's what it means to be a boutique land superstar. So that's up in the top right of our grid. No matter what, I do think that to be a boutique land superstar, you want to have high sales and low debt.

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If you can run in that way, then you'll always be doing well.

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There might be the people that you see out there very publicly because I've seen behind the scenes of so many boutique businesses. I also know this person really well. This is the stressed out seller.

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The stressed out seller is high profit, you're making a lot of money, but you also have a lot of debt. You've had to leverage money or loans, things like that, to be able to make those high profits.

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And for whatever reason, as you're working through your finances, those high profits aren't really paying down your debt. There's some kind of disconnect within there where you are making a ton of money and you might seem really successful on the outside, but behind the scenes, you know that things are kind of a mess. I have a lot of you guys out there and the shame is so real on this part of the process. A lot of people grew really fast during the pandemic. A lot of people grew really fast because they're just doing well and they're good at what they do. But in the process of growing so quickly, some things just have to go to the wayside. I think we, in general, as women who own boutiques, there's a lot going on, needless to say. So if you didn't set yourself up with the support you need from a financial advisor, from an inventory management planner, from a shipping team, from an operations planner, all that stuff, if you didn't set yourself up and you grew to a couple million dollar business in a couple of years here and you feel like scattered because you're like, well, but I still have all these loans. I still have all this stuff going on that like, I just don't understand how the math adds up. You are a stressed out seller and I want to send you my love because it is one of the hardest things to feel like on the outside you are doing so well and people think you're so successful and then

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you go home and go to bed at night and you are like worried about paying bills.

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You're worried if you have to like lay people off or if like you can even pay yourself. Like it's just no way to live because you're always stressed about something and most likely you're really stressed about money. The stressed out seller to me is the one who has the most potential to would make a profit quicker and pay down debt quicker. Because you're already making sales, you're already in that process. Something behind the scenes in your financials or in your inventory management is really off. And that is the person who I can help you make another 100K in a year, another 200K in a year, another million in a year, because you're already making the sales. We just have to figure out the back end. You guys are, to me, the easiest. You shouldn't be feeling like you're running on a hamster wheel anymore and just trying to keep up. You are the person that will absolutely benefit from something like a profit plan. One of the things that I do in my course called Profit Power Tools is I teach you how to put together a personal profit plan for your business. So no matter how big or small your inventory level is, we can determine how to take your profit and take the money that's actually in your account and divvy it up. So you always have money for everything. You're not stressed out in January because your sales are low so you can't buy new inventory. You're not worried in July that you have too much inventory and you've got to go buy fall and how are you going to sell through it all. I get it. Retail is not a straight. You can't say I want to make $300 a week. I want to make $300 a day. A lot of people come into the boutique land setting themselves up for disaster from day one because they think that the business should be the same all the time or it should grow 10% all the time. Like it's just not true. There are ways to very accurately predict your sales. And we'll put a video up here when it's ready. We'll add a card. We do have a video on how to predict your sales, but it's not that hard. And when you can predict your sales, when you can analyze your sales, then you're able to make a bigger profit and take the money that you have to pay down your debt, to pay off things, to pay for your inventory with cash. Can you even imagine doing that? Probably not right now. Or maybe you do and you still have a bunch of credit card debt.

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The thing is, is it's all fixable.

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It's all fixable. And it doesn't sound exciting to fix it. It doesn't sound like something you really want to work on.

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It's much more fun to go buy new inventory.

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But let me tell you, the more money that you have to manage in your boutique business, the more room there is for error. There also is so much more room for wasted money. There's also so much more room to make more money and keep it in your pocket. We have to adjust the levels in your business so that you're not like constantly just going out and buying more inventory, selling it and buying more and just feeling like it's a rat race to keep up. If that is you, we can fix your business so quickly, like in like two weeks. So easy. Don't be stressed out. Don't be a stressed out seller. You are in a great position, but you don't feel like it because you're running on a hamster wheel. I want to come and like grab you off the hamster wheel and say, Hey, here's your plan. Just follow this, do these three things. And by the end of the year, you're going to be 10% more profitable than you were last year. Right? Which for some people can mean an extra hundred thousand dollars, an extra $200,000. The more money you make, the more deeply seated the problems will be and the more compounded they will be.

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So my biggest advice, and this is also because I know this from personal experience, deal with it sooner rather than later.

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As the problems start to pile up, they get worse. They get more complicated. You just feel like you can never dig out. You can. There's no need to feel ashamed. There's no need to worry about it. You can go from stressed out seller to boutique land superstar very easily. Do you think that you're a stressed out seller? Tell me below. If you do want to learn more about my Profit Power Tools program, we'll put the link here and the down in the comments.

9:27 - Speaker 1

That's a six module program where I teach you how to be more profitable in your boutique business.

9:31 - Speaker 1

And honestly, the people that it's perfect for are the ones that we call the struggling product seller. Now the struggling product seller, this seems to be the most common situation. I come across a struggling product seller probably every two out of three times I talk to someone. Well, here's what I'll say. Out of every six people we talk to, we know that three of them are going to be just starting out. About two of them are going to be this struggling product seller. So you are making sales, you have a business, up and running. Your boutique is like rocking and rolling. You're selling, okay? Doesn't mean you're selling like $50,000 a month. You could be selling a couple thousand dollars a month worth of goods, but you're selling.

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You're open. You're shipping.

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The doors are open to your brick and mortar if that's the way you're selling, but your boutique is open and you are making sales. The issue because comes, you're not making enough sales. So you're continuing to go into more debt.

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So the debt to sales ratio is like really off and you feel like you can never get ahead.

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You're struggling because you can really never get ahead.

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It's truly like this cycle.

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You buy inventory, you sell inventory, and then you take the money that you made from that inventory, you go buy more inventory. So it's just a cycle of you're buying, you're selling, you're buying, you're selling, you're buying, you're selling. And every time that you buy, you're putting it on a card or using a loan. And then when you go to sell, you have to not only pay that credit card off or pay into that loan, but you still need to buy inventory. It's a vicious cycle that takes a little bit of time to get out. But for a struggling product seller, I want to tell you two things that you can do right now.

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Number one is you can go back and analyze your sales.

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Because you have made sales and because you are making money, you can go back and see what were your best sellers, what really didn't work, what could be expanded, what did you order late and didn't have a good chance to sell.

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Really looking and analyzing your sales is going to give you the path forward.

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It's going to show you the signs of what you're doing well and just what's not hitting. It's not even that you're not doing it well. It's just sometimes when you buy things, they don't work. They don't sell and that's okay. What we need to do is learn from it.

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We need to learn how can we leverage what's really working, minimize what's not working, and use that growth so the goal is to get your sales going, make you have a higher profit.

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Doing some tweaks on the back end too would never hurt in terms of your profit margin and pricing and how much you're buying of things. All of those little tweaks combined with now because you have the right inventory, at the right time, at the right price, you're going to sell more.

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You just are. This is why sales are predictable. Most people that say sales aren't predictable are the ones that struggle with understanding their inventory.

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When you have a boutique, the number one thing you look at every Monday should be your inventory. How much you sold, how much is on order, and how much is like sitting in your back room still, okay? Those three numbers combine to give you your future projections.

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I'm getting into another video, but the first key element of that is looking at your sales.

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How much did you sell? What did you sell?

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What were your best sizes? What were your best colors?

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So many people don't know this.

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It's actually kind of insane to me.

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How many people I have asked, hey, how much did you make last month? And they don't even know.

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They're like, I don't remember. I want you to start remembering.

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How much money did you make last month? Be proud of it.

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A lot of people avoid it because they just don't want to look at the number because they have feelings attached to it. When we unattach our feelings from the numbers, we're able to get out of the matrix.

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Part of this matrix is you're stuck in one of these places. We want you to be a Boutique Land superstar. I want you to know exactly how much inventory to buy.

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I want you to be paying off your debt as you sell more because your profits are higher.

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And then on the back end, I want you to pay yourself because why are we doing this if we can't pay ourselves? Controversial opinion, but I think that if you run a business, you should pay yourself from that business, whether it is in time, money, or freedom, right? So if you are in this struggling product seller, you've got to go back and look at your sales.

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The other piece of this is you have to know where your debt is and what the priorities of your debts are.

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So we have had people come to me and we've said, Hey, look at how much debt you have. Let's chortle it up. Let's see where it is.

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And they're like, Whoa, I have way less than I thought or way more than I thought.

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And it's in different places. And once I prioritize it, I realize I can actually handle it. I can deal with it. Putting together an analysis of how much money you owe to whom on what interest rate, when is it due? It's the next level after just looking at what your minimum payment is, right? Or looking at what, oh, I need $6,000 to pay off the card.

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It seems like people are very all or nothing with credit cards and loans and things like that.

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Meanwhile, a lot of us live in houses that we're in for 30 to 40 years paying off a mortgage. Your business is no different. And again, I don't want it to take you 30 years to pay off your like initial investment But the reality is is if you took out $30,000 start your business most likely that will take you five years to pay off It will take you six years and you want it to you want it to take longer. So you have money for cash flow Okay, see where I'm going with this and you might say well, I don't have a lot of profit and I don't have a lot of debt, great. You are the stock store owner, okay? There are some people that are in this category where they're not investing enough to actually get to the next level. So a lot of people will end up here kind of in between like the $8,000 and $10,000 range or their like $5,000 and $15,000 range per per month in revenue, they get stuck in this area mostly because they don't want to go in debt so much that they're always just like squeezing every last bit of profit out when really if they invested a little bit more, went into debt a little bit for a little bit of time, they would make that money back when they sold the items. They wouldn't be so stuck. Honestly, I think one of the things that's so underestimated about starting a business, especially a boutique, is that it's going to be easy.

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You're going to buy things and sell them and that's it.

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You're going to post on social and look cute, make reels, do your whole thing. When in actuality, the retail business is one of the world's oldest businesses, there are rules of engagement and standard practices that a lot of people starting out their retail business just don't know. And frankly, that's why I'm here. I'm a retail nerd. I love translating it for smaller businesses because let's be honest, most of us, most of us have 10 employees or less. I went to a conference recently and I said, what do you define as a small business? They said, 500 employees or less. Most of you watching probably don't have more than 20 employees, maybe 50 employees, right? 500 employees?

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For some of us, that feels like, oh my gosh, where are they going every day?

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What are they doing that's so many, right? But I need you to know, whether you have 500 employees, whether you have five employees, or it's just you.

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We have to look at your sales.

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We have to look at your inventory.

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And we need to understand what the financial plan is, rocking and rolling through the ups and downs of retail, to know how much money you're gonna need for inventory, to pay down your debt, to pay your employees, all that

16:36 - Unidentified Speaker

stuff. And it's not as simple as you think. Think. So no matter where you end up on the matrix, I'm happy that you're here. I'm happy that I get to teach you. If you want to hear a little bit more about this and sort of where this idea came from, watch this video here about why I think profit first does not work for boutiques and retail business owners. And I'll see you guys on the next one. Bye.