EP 85: How to Start Your Online Boutique

The exact boutique launch framework I use to help my clients launch their own boutiques and actually get sales.

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Transcript

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Hello, welcome to the LED show. Today is gonna be a good episode. I'm gonna walk you through how to start your online boutique. So I have been helping women do this, and I have a boutique launch framework that I've gotten nailed down that really has helped my clients go from feeling overwhelmed, fricking Googling all night, saving YouTube videos, trying to piece a bunch of random crap together to start their boutique and feeling like. I don't know what the heck I'm doing to actually having a clear path to make their dreams come true. So if this sounds like you and you've been wanting to start your online boutique, this episode is gonna be for you. And if you're someone out there who's like Ally, I already got my boutique up and running, this is gonna be a good one for you to. To listen to as well because there may be some key steps to getting your boutique started that you may have skipped or overlooked because maybe you did duct tape your launch plan together and you missed out on a lot of things that are actually going to have you have a lot of success as a boutique, especially in the early days. And listen, what I do wanna say is if you are in the early days of your boutique, this is. A more challenging time'cause you're trying to learn all the things. So remember that if you're in the early phases, there's a lot to learn. That's why a lot of my girls, after, like a lot of the women I mentorship will come to me at like six months to maybe year, year and a half, because they feel like they've. Gotten that like scrappy, got it up and running thing going. But then now it's like, okay, how do I create a real business that generates sales on repeat? And that's when I come in and give you the strategy and the systems. So, yes, and by the way, I've been having some amazing DM conversations today with women that have come into, um, come into message me after seeing my IG stories or tiktoks and have been asking for some fun help. And, um, don't be a, don't be scared to DM me. I love talking to you guys about business and seeing which programs are gonna fit you the best. I literally live for this When I tell you that I'm so excited for you to succeed, that is what brings me joy these days. Okay? That is like the whole thing. So I am absolutely thrilled to be in the mentorship era, and it's been honestly the most fulfilling thing I've ever done. Besides having kids, of course, but y'all are a close second. Okay. Alright, so let's talk about how you're gonna start your online boutique. And by the way, I'm not gonna give you this, the like really dumb advice. It's not dumb advice, but it's like the easy stuff that you can Google, okay? Like the documents you need, you need to get your sales tax id, you need to go to your government, like your state government and get your LLC and like all that stuff. I'm not gonna. Go through any of that. I'm gonna talk about the real money making stuff. So if you're stuck on any of that, girl, you can Google that and figure that out. And in fact, I want you to, it's part of being a business owner is being resourceful. But this is like the nitty gritty stuff that's really setting your boutique up to actually generate sales when you launch. Okay, you ready for this? You wanna learn? We're high fiving each other in through the, um, interwebs right now, and let's get started. So I'm gonna go through, um, like a five step framework that I've really found has been, again, very helpful to kind of have like piece by piece, step by step. So I'll give you the framework today and if you feel like you want my help implementing this into your own boutique and you want like. Me in your pocket helping you with this DM me because on occasion I do have a spot open to help you with this privately. So if that's something you're interested in, shoot me a DM and I can let you know. I don't always have availability, but if I do, or I could tell you availability they I have coming up, we could talk about working together. Okay, so numero uno, you wanna start your online boutique. This is number one thing, and you guys already may know this if you're already, if you're already podcast listeners, you may know this, but number one, step one. If I was going to help you start your, your boutique, we would get super clear on your boutique vision. Fricking clear, crystal clear, okay? You need to have your vision nailed down as much as possible. Now, again, none of these steps do. I want you to get bogged down to the point where you don't move, but I want you to know that this is what you need to do and. Now you know what to think about and you need to stop Googling everything else and just focus on this stuff. Okay? So first thing you gotta do is get super clear on your boutique vision so you know exactly who you're going to be serving to and selling to, and what you are going to be selling, right? So who you're serving, what you're selling, who you're helping, okay? The boutique vision has gotta be clear. Because doing anything without that first step clear is going to end up being a very confusing place to be.'cause as you move on in these steps, it all comes back to this. And listen, if you've already opened your boutique and you didn't get this vision part down, you already know it's affecting you right now. Because 99% of the women that come to me that need help, this step was skipped inadvertently. It's not like you purposely did it, like you're trying to like skate the system. You just didn't know. You didn't know what steps to do in what order. And so now we're fixing it right here. Okay, so we get super clear on the boutique vision. That's step one. Step two, you're inventory purchasing. This is a really important key and it should come pretty f pretty quickly if you're trying to do this like. In an expedited process. You don't wanna spend months and months and months and months figuring this out. The next thing I want you to think about is your inventory, right? And your inventory, which is step two, has to be aligned with step one, which is who you're helping and what you're gonna sell to them. And this is where a lot of people, if they don't have step one down and they go into buying inventory, they end up buying a bunch of random shizz. And believe me, I've been here. Listen, I've made all these mistakes. That's why I am able to tell you exactly what to do with 100% certainty on what's gonna work for you. So don't make the mistake of just buying a bunch of random stuff. If you work with me, we get really, really clear on exactly what you should be buying for your first round of inventory. So you know when you launch. You have the right products available that your people are gonna be obsessed with. This is how you have a successful launch. Okay? So that's step two, inventory. Step three, we gotta create a scroll stopping brand that stands out from all the fricking basic Bettys out there. Boutique world lovingly is full of a lot of basic Bettys. And again, it's no fault of their own. It's just not understanding sales and marketing. And since you're in this community and you wanna be a trendsetter, you understand that you don't wanna fall in line with all the basic Bettys. You wanna stand out, you wanna be different. You want something authentic and unique that people are gonna brag about. That's what we work on in step in step three. Is making sure that your boutique, your brand, your business, your company stands out from the basic Bettys. Okay? So this means making sure that you are not just doing what everybody else is doing, your carving out your own space by having unique branding, and it all comes back to you and your authenticity. The more authentic you can be, the more of a unique. An exciting brand you're gonna create. So that's what number three is. Okay? Your scroll stopping brand number four, building your online store. This is gonna be the next part you're gonna do. Okay? So number one, you get clear on who your boutique is for and who you're selling to. Okay? Number two, you get your inventory lined up and you make sure that that is aligned with step number one. Number three, you create your scroll. Stopping branding. Okay? Something that's different, something that's unique. Branding, by the way, is not just fonts and logos and colors, okay? Branding is a whole vibe. How are you going to show up for your boutique? I. What is the vibe? What is, and this again, must align with step number one, your ideal customer. So if you are trying to create a sophisticated brand that is speaking to like the women that are living the chic, luxurious, high life in downtown, and living like the penthouse and they're very proper, your brand must align with that customer that you wanna help, meaning. You, the way you speak, the way the photos are taken, the way the logo looks, the way that the, literally, the way that you speak the brand tonality is gonna be one of the most important things I. And if you are creating something that's like very easy breezy, very casual, like you're gonna talk like you know how you would to your talk to your best friend, you guys are real sassy. Like you have a lot of personality that needs to come out in your brand. What I don't wanna happen for you is have it be very basic, Betty, generic, vanilla, boring. Okay? So just a little tangent on number three, number four, I said we're moving on to building our online store. Okay? This is the fourth step in this framework. I have a very simple secret sauce and I'll do a whole, I should do a whole episode on this, but what we wanna focus on with your website is I wanna, I want you to know and understand a few things. Number one, you don't need to hire anybody for this step. So stop thinking you need to go hire a website designer that's gonna cost you$5,000. Yeah, they're gonna create you a super cute website, but they're not gonna know how to actually convert. How to create converting websites for your specific ideal customer. I want you to understand this process, so I want you just to use a free theme. Okay? Do the dawn theme, whatever. Don't get carried away here. Don't think you have to put a hundred zillion fonts and graphics and colors and this, and fonts and worry about changing everything. I don't want you to change really anything except adding in your special, unique pieces. So if you're in the trendsetter membership, I have a whole uh, section on this of website audits where I've audited people's websites that have joined the Trendsetter membership. This isn't an add-on, you can do, you can watch those website audits. You can see how I tell you to set up your website. It's a very clean, very simple strategic process. So what I want you to know from here, because this is, you're listening to me. I can't show you this, so it'd be hard for me to like explain this via talking, but what I want you to understand is, here's the big takeaway. You don't need to hire someone. You can do this yourself. And in fact, I want you to do this yourself at first because I want you to understand the workings of the Shopify website. It's so easy, and I don't want you again to get distracted from what they've already created in their templates by trying to change a zillion things. The font doesn't matter at this point, okay? The font that they're using, keep that font. I want you focused on adding fun, unique elements that speak to your ideal customer. Okay? So this is in your copy, on your website, in your graphics. That's where I want you focused. Super clear and simple. Okay. Simple sales. So it's fourth step. The fourth step that's building your website and you're fricking doing it. Okay? And number five, setting up your socials. I. Setting up your socials the right way. Okay? Again, everything in this little framework goes back to the first step, which is getting clear on who you're serving. So when you set up your socials, you need to have that person in mind and everything that you do from your bio, from what you post, from how you show up, from what's in your captions, from everything, everything goes back to being aligned with step number one of who you sell to. Okay? So you gotta set up your socials the right way. This means having a clear picture, profile picture of your logo. Okay? I love your face, but people are not gonna get that you're a boutique in a store. You're gonna get, you're gonna get friend zoned, okay? We want people to know that you're here to help them with products, meaning. People are going to give you money. Okay? So I want you putting your boutique logo nice and clear in your profile page. I want your Instagram bio to say very simply what you sell, who you help. We help blank with blank. Okay? That's always a great sentence that you can start with. We help blank with blank and keep it simple. Okay. Don't get all crazy here. You can always refine and fix things as you go, but what I want you to know is right now in the beginning, we just need you to launch and we need you to launch in the most simple and effective way possible. Simple, effective, no complexities here. When you get all wrapped up in thinking you have to learn a zillion, bajillion things, that's when you get so overwhelmed that you end up not doing anything at all. Right. So we're setting up your socials and your email systems in this step. Okay. Socials and then emails next, sorry, number six. Let's make number six. Email. Let's get this nice and tidy here. Normally I do socials and email like the same week if we're working together, but I think for this specific episode or this podcast, it's easier if you look at it as two, two different steps. So we got your social setup, then you need your email system. Again, remember this is the shiz that people don't wanna tell you.'cause they're just telling you to like, oh, go get your sales tax I idea, and away you go. Okay, well that's great. That took you two seconds. This is the hard stuff, right. Not hard, but the money making stuff, the, the stuff that actually takes skills, okay? So you can become successful. I don't want you to just launch a boutique to crickets and then nothing ever happens, right? I want you making money. I want you building a company. I want you building like a company that does so well that you can do whatever the hell you want in the day because you know your boutique is bringing in sales and you can afford to do whatever you wanna do. That's the, that's the, that's the whole idea here. Freedom, time, freedom. Okay, so number six, we're setting up your email systems. Here's the good thing. I used to, I used to overcomplicate this not only for myself, but even for my, my clients. Now, Shopify has a really good built-in email marketing system, so that's what I want you to do. I want you to get familiar with a Shopify email marketing system and use that. Get it set up, get your popup coupon set up. Have a way for people to give you their email address so you can start retargeting them in your. Emails. Okay, so that's the next thing we're gonna do. We're gonna use Shopify for it. And it's gonna be so simple. You just add the email Shopify app. It's free to get started. You, you create a very simple template and away you go. Okay? The next thing you need to plan your launch Simple strategy again. Okay? Let's not get crazy here. Make people feel excited about your launch. Creative, fun, simple strategic content and promo calendar for your launch. Again, I'm giving you like the cliff notes here, right? And then the last step of the process is to launch your boutique press launch, and away you go. And when you follow a real launch system like this, where I'm going through the things you actually need to do to generate money, once the launch is here, you're gonna be so excited because you have done the work leading up to this point, the real work to actually get humans to buy from you. And so many times people are just like, well, I'm just gonna get some inventory and you know, I don't know. I'll like throw it up on the website and then just hope something sells. It's like, no. We can't do that. That's not, that's not how we set the standard of being a business owner. I mean, you can do that, but you're not gonna get sales. It's like, what's the point? Right? So let me rerun through this like launch framework that, um, is again, a very clear path to success for you. Number one, get clear on your boutique vision. Number two, choose your first batch of inventory. Thinking about. Your customers, who they are and what they're gonna like. Okay? No random shiz here. Number three, creating your scroll. Stopping unique brand. No basic Betty stuff. Number four, you're gonna build your online store using Shopify. You're doing it yourself. It's easy. No tech stress, easy peasy, boutique squeezy. Okay, number five, we're setting up your socials. Number six, you're setting up your email system so you're ready to roll with that. Number seven, you're planning your launch. Number eight, you launch your store. Boom. Badda, bing, badda, boom. So if this sounds something, uh, or if this sounds like something that you feel you are ready to do, this is full permission. It's go time. Stop Googling, stop staying up all hours of the fricking night searching the internet, trying to figure this all to out, trying to piece it together. This is your framework. This is how you do it. And if you're like, Ooh, Allie, I love this. And I want your help, your direct support with this. Again, just shoot me a dm. Like I said, I on occasion will open up one spot, um, to help someone get through this and launch their boutique together, which is super fun. Um, it is really, really fun. I'm not gonna lie. And my clients have amazing results and it's just so fun watching them again go from like just a total dream wondering like, can I do this? What if I fail? Am I good enough to do it? And then literally as soon as we start working together, it's just like, and you guys can check my IG stories. I sometimes post about it, but it's just like, oh my God, this is so fun. This is so exciting. Like I'm crying, happy tears. I love this. It just takes the stress away, right? Anytime you have frameworks and mentorship and help from someone who's been there, done that a zillion times, it makes life so much easier for you. So much easier for you. That's the whole point. That's the whole point of learning something from someone who's already done it. Right? That's what we're doing here. That's why you're here. Okay? I love you. Have an amazing day. You got this.