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The Ali Dee Show
For product-based business entrepreneurs who are looking to build a mega business so they can create financial freedom and a rich life from the inside out. Learn how to make big, bold, moves and stand out from the competition while bringing in sales 24/7 as you tap into proven marketing, sales, and mindset strategies from 7-figure business owner and industry expert, Ali Dee.
The Ali Dee Show
Ep 87: 10 Business Truths for Better Sales
Time for some tough love that could transform your boutique business. In this no-holds-barred episode, I'm sharing ten business truths that might sting a little but will absolutely help you boost your sales. These are the exact insights I wish someone had screamed at me years ago when I was struggling to understand why my content wasn't converting to actual sales.
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Hi there, welcome to the Allie D Show Hope. You're having an amazing week Lots of sales, lots of new customers, lots of cha-chings in your inbox and today, what I want to talk about with you on this amazing show that you all always DM me and tell me that you love. Thank you so much for your DMs, by the way. I love hearing from you, but I want to talk to you today about some business truths that's hard to say, business truths for boutique owners and brand owners. That might hurt your feelings a little bit, okay, but they are going to help your sales. So, if you're cool with this, I want to jump right in and talk about these, because these are things that I wish someone would have screamed at me a long time ago. So I'm not going to scream at you, we're just going to have a chill conversation about this, but I do want to make you aware of these business truths because, if you don't know about these, these are going to be things that are indirectly affecting your business or, I'm sorry, that are directly affecting your business, that you don't even realize are happening behind the scenes. So you ready, you locked in, you ready for this? Okay, the first one I want you to know is if you don't sell it, no one will buy it. How freaking simple is this? But how true is this? This is one I wanted to talk about first because, if you like, after listening to this for a few minutes, like I don't know, someone yells your name from the other room and away you go and you forget to listen to the rest of this podcast. I need you to know this one thing If you don't sell it, no one will buy it.
Speaker 1:So many times, business owners are terrified of being too salesy and they don't want to bother people and they don't want to post the same thing over and over because they're embarrassed that their feed has all the same products. And anytime anyone ever says that to me, I always say there's literally companies out there that sell one product and one product only and make a bazillion dollars from it. And you're worried about posting a few things every now and again, like multiple times when, literally imagine if you sold one product and that's all you sold, and for the rest of your life you had to talk about one product. It doesn't matter. Don't put too much into the thought of like I'm saying this too much, I'm being too salesy. I'm like talking about this one thing over and over again. Or even like you feel like you don't have enough inventory. Or like your customers or your audience. They're tired of seeing the same things. I'm doing air quotes, because I hear all this stuff from you guys all the time and I have to remind you listen, you got to show up and sell. If you don't sell it, no one will buy it. Okay, write that one fricking down, put it on your forehead. I don't care what it takes, but you need to remember that one okay.
Speaker 1:Number two consistency beats perfection every time. One thing I noticed about the women inside Trendsetter who get the best results they are the most consistent. Do we all kind of have things that get in our way of our consistency? Yes, for some people these are mental games, mind drama. For other people it's time constraints.
Speaker 1:Whatever the case may be, you need to knock that shiz out, because consistency showing up every day for your business is part of the job. Just like if you had a nine to five, you got to show up, you got to clock in, you got to do the work if you want to get paid. It's the same freaking thing as a boutique owner, as a brand owner and as someone who has an online store. You got to be consistent. You can't show up just when you feel like. Imagine if you showed up for your job your nine to five only when you felt like it. How often would you be going? Right, you don't wake up and go. I am so ready to kill it at my nine to five today, maybe you do, and that's amazing. That means you're a high achiever and you excel at a lot of things in life. But this, this motivation, comes from within. So you got to be consistent, even if it's messy and not perfect.
Speaker 1:I've seen so many times people not even show up because their their feed. They don't think it looks perfect enough, they don't have the perfect shots, the perfect product shots, the perfect they're like still learning, and they're embarrassed by that, so they don't even want to post. And I'm like, girl, you got to be consistent. That will beat perfection every time. Number three we're on a roll here already.
Speaker 1:Pretty branding won't save a bad message. I'm going to say that again Pretty branding won't save a bad message. I can't tell you how many times I have a woman come into my DMs and she has a beautiful, perfect feed and I can tell she has put her heart and soul into every little aesthetic thing, from the colors to the perfect angles, to the way. I mean, I know how hard that is. That takes a lot of work, but still not seeing sales. It's because the messaging is bad. The messaging isn't connecting. And if you don't have messaging that connects, you could have the prettiest feed in the whole entire world and I'll give you an award for that because you deserve it but you're not going to get any sales. So again, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but this is meant to get you more sales. That's all I freaking care about. At the end of the day, is you making sales, okay? So pretty branding won't save a bad message. Number three is this number three or four, I don't even know, we've lost count.
Speaker 1:Your content shouldn't just look good, it should convert. So not only do people obsess about the content being perfect, but what happens is they don't have enough variety of content in the different styles that you need to post to be able to convert. Many people just focus on getting the perfect product shots and the perfect lighting and the perfect imagery and the perfect colors and the perfect edit up on their page and forget that there's a whole process that goes behind content to get it to convert. It's not just again having the prettiest feed. It's not just about looking good online. It's about creating a content having the prettiest feet. It's not just about looking good online. It's about creating a content strategy that converts.
Speaker 1:And what does this mean? You guys know you learn this inside Trendsetter. If you're not in Trendsetter, by the way, what are you freaking doing? Get inside right now. This summer is going to be insane. We're having a whole series. It's called Hot Sales Summer. I'll tell you more about it at the end here, but it's going to be three months me and you June, july, august inside the Trendsetter membership, while all the other boutique owners are being lazy summer girls having their hot girl summers. We're going to be having our hot sales summers and we're going to be kicking butt and getting ready for the fourth quarter. So if you want to have your best fourth quarter you've ever had in your entire life, you need to get in Trendsetter right now. It's imatrendsettercom slash hot sales summer to access this special offer. Or just DM me the word hot on Instagram, okay. So again, content shouldn't look good. It should convert. Next connection converts more than discounts ever will. Are we seeing a pattern here? I'm talking about converting. Okay, again, this is you getting sales. Connection converts more than discounts ever will.
Speaker 1:Raise your hand if you're guilty of thinking that if you just run another sale, you're going to get more sales. And what happens? You do your little sale and you don't get more sales. It's because you still haven't made the connection with your audience. And, by the way, once you do this, once you make the connection, you can charge whatever the heck you want to charge for your products and people will pay it Because they believe there's value in what you're selling, because you have connected with them and you have made it very clear in your content that what you sell is for them. And then they're rallying for you, they're rooting for you. I mean not necessarily like being your cheerleader, like out here, like pumping you up, but they rally around your brand because you rally around them. It's a give and take relationship here. It's dating, okay, you got to like each other. There's got to be something in it for both of you. It's not just all about you, okay. The next truth Again, I don't know what number we're on anymore.
Speaker 1:You don't need more followers, you need more strategy. Again, how many of us are guilty of saying, if I only had more followers, I'd have more sales? How can I get more followers? I need my follower count to grow and like I've even been guilty of this okay, where I'll be like, if I had more followers, more would be happening. And I mean this was earlier in my business and what I quickly learned was I don't care if you have 100 followers or 1,000 followers or 10,000 followers. You need to spend more time nurturing the people who have already said I like you. It's a lot harder to get new people to like you than it is to get the people that already like you to buy from you, and this is a huge thing that people miss. Oh, this is so important. People are always chasing new followers and I'm like okay, but how are you nurturing the followers, that people that already said yes to you? Are you doing anything to build that relationship? Are you just in constant seeking of new people? And followers can feel this? Nurture your people. You don't need more followers, you need more strategy. Here's another one Hustle isn't a business plan, it's a warning sign.
Speaker 1:I love this so much. Hustle isn't a business plan. It's a warning sign If you have found yourself in a constant state of hustle, a constant state of dumpster fire, a constant state of waking up in the morning, body full of anxiety, wondering what you need to do, you know, to get more sales because you're already working your butt off and there's not another minute in the day that you feel like you have to do any of this and you're working like, let's say, you do have a full-time job, you're working full-time. You only have a few hours on the weekend for your business. Whatever the case may be, you are hustling your butt off and you're not seeing results. This is a major warning sign because you should not have to hustle your booty off to get sales.
Speaker 1:More hustle does not mean more money. I don't care what anyone's out there preaching. That's the freaking truth. If you're hustling your little booty off and you're not seeing results, that means you don't have a good strategy. You need to up-level your skills.
Speaker 1:Again, I'm sorry if this is hurting your feelings a little bit. It's tough love. I love you and I want you to succeed. This is the only reason why I'm like okay, these are business truths you need to hear and they might hurt your feelings a little bit, and I'm okay with that, because you know I love you at the end of the day, but you got to know this stuff. This is why I wish someone would have screamed these to me early on in my business, but I probably wouldn't have listened anyways, because I'm kind of stubborn.
Speaker 1:Okay, so again, hustle isn't a business plan, it's a warning sign. It's a clear indicator to me, and it should be a clear indicator to you, that what you have going on is not connecting the dots. Okay, because you should not feel that way. Is entrepreneurship always going to be a game of like up and down and great and then second guessing? Yeah, I mean, there's some normalcy to that. Okay, I don't want to say that, like you should be perfect butterflies and rainbows all the time. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is, if you have hustled yourself to death, you're exhausted, you're overwhelmed and you don't know what else to do. This means you need to fix your strategy.
Speaker 1:I see this so many times with people that join Trendsetter. They come in and they feel like they're at their, they're like wits end, and I'm like oh girl, we I mean, first of all, we can say we're at our wits end, but we know we ain't quitting this. Okay, we're not going anywhere, right? So we might as well just dive into the fact that we're in it for the long haul. Okay, so let's fix it. Let's not make it so dramatic. Let's not be like I'm working my life away here. Let's fix it. That's why I love when women join Trendsetter and they go through the framework and they're like, oh, the weight of the world has lifted from their shoulders.
Speaker 1:You guys, I'm not saying this to try to, like you know, push you into that. I'm saying this because it's about a strategy. I don't care if you learn it from me or whoever else. Like, that's your own thing, okay, but you have to do it. You can't think that you're going to hustle your way out of this. You won't. I'm a little intense tonight, am I being a little intense? Okay, next, if you're talking to everyone, you're connecting with no one. You guys know I preach this day in, day out. Know your customers.
Speaker 1:But I want to get even more specific here, because the way that I've been talking about this for a long time and helping women figure this out, I actually feel like I'm flipping that outside of its head, because the way I've always taught it is a little more like niche demographic, like it's just been a little bit more of a straight answer, which is great answer, which is great. But what I want to teach now is that it's not just about the person and it's more about their lifestyle and instead of dissecting other questions first that I've had clients ask first in the past, I want you to think about this now Because I feel like people are getting it faster when I'm teaching it this way and as a mentor listen, I have helped so many women now that I see where you guys get stuck and I feel like this way, this new way that I've been teaching this for the past few months, has really been helping a lot of women make major breakthroughs. So listen up here. If you're talking to everyone, you're connecting with no one. Who is your ideal customer and what is their lifestyle? And connect with their lifestyle.
Speaker 1:I was just having an amazing phone conversation with a private client the other day and we were talking about this, a lot about what is the lifestyle of her ideal customer. Tapping into that. We were brainstorming all the things like what is it that this category that she knows her products are made for. What is everything that they do in their lives? I'm talking about their hobbies, their interests. What does their daily life look like? What excites them, what are their values, what do they look forward to? What are their dreams, what do they hate, what are they enemies of? All this stuff is important for you to understand and this is how you connect. And if you're speaking generically out there you guys know I talk about vanilla, generic content If you're doing that, you're not going to connect.
Speaker 1:It's too broad. In an online world, you cannot be broad and get success. You have to break through the noise. You have to get to their feeds. How do you get to their feeds? It's by being so freaking clear on who you are meant to connect with that the algorithms have no choice but to serve up your content to them, because the algorithms want to help us. Okay, they want people who have good content on their platforms. They want people that are creating things that other people like and want to watch and want to be involved with. They want to help us, but you got to help yourself here in this situation, okay. So if you're connecting or if you're talking to everyone, you're connecting with no one.
Speaker 1:Here's the next one. What number is this? Let me see if I could tell oh, we're on number nine, I think. Okay, number nine. Your content should work for you and not wear you out. When you have a content strategy, your content will be working for you 24 7, doing the heavy lifting for you. Your content is like another you that you can literally post and it's like you selling for you without you being there. This is why content is so powerful and people will say to me, like ali, I just want to be an online store and I just want to be a boutique owner. I, I just want to be a boutique owner. I don't want to be a content creator and I'm like well, too bad, sister, because you want to show up online and sell your clothes online. Welcome to content being the heartbeat of your business. We cannot ignore this. We cannot put it on the back burner any longer, and I, for one, happen to love content.
Speaker 1:Now was there a time in my business where I was like I hate content, I hate social media. You guys know I've said in the past I don't feel like I'm literally a social media person. If I didn't have businesses, I would probably not even be on social media, but I do. So I understand the responsibility that comes with that and it comes with. If I want the best for my business and I want these women out there who I believe would love my products, to actually get a chance to buy my stuff, then I need to understand that content's important and when you figure out how to get better at it through strategy, it will not wear you out, it will energize you, and I just had a woman inside VIP actually tell me this last week. She messaged me and said content is starting to feel fun. I can't even believe I'm saying that, allie, and I go. I know, I know this is that magical moment when you start running content and it doesn't run you Because you're like dang.
Speaker 1:Content's how I connect with my people. I want my people to see my products because I know they're going to love them, and what a shame it would be that I decided I didn't want to figure out content because I wasn't a social media person. How sad would it be that that person out there that needs my products to make their life better they're not going to even see it because I gave up on content or I decided that just status quo, generic content is fine, because I don't want to be a quote unquote content creator. Not only does that hurt your business, but, guys, that hurts your customers, who are out there looking for what you have, and if they can't find you, they can't buy it. And that they want this, they want your products, okay. So your content should work for you, not wear you out.
Speaker 1:And if it's wearing you out again like hustle, this is a warning sign. This is a warning sign that you're doing content wrong. I love you, but it's wrong. When you do content right, it invigorates you, it brings energy and life and you get excited about it. That's the whole freaking thing here. Hello, like, just give me like a high five over the airwaves right now. Like I'm high fiving the air. I want you to high-five with me and really feel this Content should give you energy. It should be the thing that you look forward to the most. And if you don't right now, we got to fix that, okay. And then, lastly, are you guys ready for the last one? You already know, I've already said this about a hundred times, but I'm going to say it one more time If you want different results, you need a different strategy.
Speaker 1:I posted a tiktok tonight where I was like how many of us have been on the bathroom floor crying, saying nothing's working? It's not working. I don't know. Should I give up? Should I even be doing this like I don't know what the frick I'm doing? Second, guessing everything and going should I even keyword quit? Should I quit?
Speaker 1:That's what happens when you need to create different results but you haven't figured out that you need a different strategy because you're still trying the same things over and over and over and you're like I need a different result. But listen, you're doing the same thing, so nothing's going to change. But it's scary to go away from what you've been doing because it did bring you some success. And now you're like, oh, if I get away from the only thing that brought me success, like am I throwing everything under the water? Am I ever going to have success if I walk away from the things that aren't working? And I'm here to tell you I love when this happens.
Speaker 1:I love when you have the crying on the floor moment, thinking everything's just going to like fall apart, because I've been through that so many times and now I know that that's a key indicator that something needs to up level in my business. So I don't get too dramatic about it. I'll still have my moments, but I get myself out of it pretty quickly because I realized, ooh, this is a chance for me to up-level something in my business that is meant to be bigger and bolder. So pay attention to these feelings, pay attention to the idea that you want a different result and you're not getting it yet, and you feel this angst that may come up as, like, I want to quit, okay, like again, we know you're not quitting, okay, you just might say that for a minute, but you're going to get over it, and the reality is is you're going to be better after that moment. So that's why I don't freak out about these moments anymore.
Speaker 1:But this, if this is your first freak out, or you've been through your first one, or your second one, like, just know, this is normal and you're going to go through this multiple times and it's totally fine. Don't be embarrassed, don't be weirded out by it. It's just life, entrepreneur, life, okay. But I do want to tell you you need to get out of it and it's it's again. You need a different strategy. So it's a challenge to you as a business owner to really dive in and take a look at your business and go where can I up level? Now let me go learn the strategy from someone who's done that and let me implement it. Boom, okay.
Speaker 1:So again, 10 business truths that I wish someone would have screamed at me when I was younger. I'm screaming at them, them at you, screaming, screaming it to you now. Okay, that's what I'm trying to say here, so hopefully this resonated with you. I'm going to actually post these as an Instagram post as well. So, if you're like, I wanted to write these down, I didn't get a chance to like, I'll put it as an Instagram post, to go on Instagram and save it and that way, you can like go back and reference these when you feel like you need to hear these truths, because don't you all like feel like someone needs to just tell me the truth around here, like I'm tired of like just wondering. I just want the facts, ma'am, please. That's what this community is about. Okay, also, I want to remind you don't forget Hot Sales Summer, june, july, august with me inside the Trendsetter membership.
Speaker 1:We are going to focus on three main things. Are you freaking ready for this? Are you ready to join, because you're going to be after this. What I want you to know about Hot Sales Summer is in June we're going to be straight up focusing on your sales strategy. So we're going to look at your sales process. We're going to get you so honed in so you feel super confident on what this looks like. July we're focusing on visibility getting your business seen, getting the spotlight on your brand. This is one area that I know a lot of people really struggle with, so we're going hardcore on that.
Speaker 1:The third thing August is like my favorite thing ever. We're going to be planning the fourth quarter. I'm talking Black Friday promos, inventory drops. We're going to have it all ready to go that way. Once September hits and we inch closer to fourth quarter, which is going to be here before you know it, you are going to be so freaking prepared that you are going to have the most record-breaking season ever, because what happens so many times is that business owners slow down in the summer, and the summer is when you need to be ramping up the momentum, and the best business owners know this, the ones that are super successful, know that the summer it's game on, because this is where you can get a lot of momentum and get ahead of the competition. That may be having a lazy girl summer and you're like, nope, I am pedal to the metal, I'm getting my momentum going. I'm going to freaking, do the thing and I'm going to show up over the summer while everyone's lounging by the pool and saying no one's buying. I'm going to have the best summer ever because I'm going to be selling the heck out of my stuff and I'm going to learn all these strategies and that way, when Q4 is here, I've done the preparation.
Speaker 1:I always say there's two things that are super important to your success it's preparation and planning. I always say there's two things that are super important to your success. It's preparation and planning. And if you just think you're going to show up to the fourth quarter and have an amazing sales season without doing preparation or planning, sister, it ain't going to happen. So I want to invite you inside Hot Sale Summer. I love the name Hot Sale Summer.
Speaker 1:Just shoot me a DM if you're like, yep, I'm ready, like I'm ready to be prepared, I'm ready to plan. I don't want to freaking wing it anymore. I don't want to show up like a baby business owner. That's just like showing up like, oh, what am I gonna do today to get sales? And you are, you feel like you've graduated From that and you are now ready to know and show up like a freaking confident boss. That's who hot sales summer is for. Okay, so just go to imatrendsettercom, slash hot sales summer to get access to this specific training and then, if you can't remember that, just DM me on Instagram the word hot. Okay, you can remember to do that. Right, it's allydceo. Make sure you're going to that specific account, allydceo. Dm me the word hot and I'll get you all the information. Okay, I love you, have an amazing day, have an amazing week and we'll talk soon.