Episode 63: Community Over Competition: How Ashley Alderson Built The Boutique Hub

If you’ve ever felt like you’re “supposed” to have a perfect business plan before you start… Ashley Alderson is here to tell you the truth: most success stories start with a pivot.

In this episode of Main Street Success Stories, Jennifer Kok sits down with Ashley Alderson, Founder & CEO of The Boutique Hub, to unpack what it really takes to build a community-led business that scales. Ashley shares how The Boutique Hub began as a consumer idea from rural North Dakota and evolved into a global community for boutique owners rooted in Community over Competition. 

Topic 1: The origin story and the pivot that built The Boutique Hub
Topic 2: Community over Competition and why collaboration creates demand
Topic 3: The hard season—imposter syndrome, betrayal, and rebuilding through service
Ashley opens up about a painful early experience that tested her confidence and forced a major reset plus the mindset shift that helped her rebuild: one step, one day, one act of service at a time.
Topic 4: Pink Friday—how “Shop Small First” became a movement
Topic 5: The 6 essential pieces of content for product-based businesses. Ashley gives a practical framework boutique owners can implement immediately.
Topic 6: Platforms, growth, and what boutique owners should focus on now
Ashley shares where boutique owners are seeing the most conversion today

Additional Resources Mentioned:

• Pink Friday – Shop Small First movement: pinkfridayweekend.com
• Heart on Main Street https://www.heartonmainstreet.org/

Meet our Guest: 

Ashley Alderson is the Founder and CEO of The Boutique Hub, connecting boutique owners worldwide with strategy, community, tools, data, events, and wholesale resources. Since 2013, The Boutique Hub has been rooted in Community over Competition, helping independent retailers grow through shared learning and action.
 Links:

• Website:

You’ve Built a Business You’re Proud Of -But It’s Time for It to Work for You. You’re still wearing all the hats, working long hours, and not paying yourself what you deserve. You know there’s more possible. More profit, more clarity, and more freedom to enjoy the life you’re building.  The Earn More Stress Less 9-Pillar Blueprint helps women entrepreneurs with families create profitable businesses that finally pay them back. 

My name is Jennifer Kok, and I’m a profit and growth advisor for service-based women entrepreneurs. I help women business owners make smarter, more strategic decisions so they can grow profitably, pay themselves consistently, and avoid burnout.

Because the truth is, business owners make decisions all day long, but the ones that really matter are often the hardest ones. Should I hire? Raise my prices? Invest in marketing? Let go of a draining client? Expand, or simplify?

Those decisions carry weight, and they can impact your time, your profit, your energy, and your long-term growth.

That’s why I created the Focused Growth Collective, a virtual mastermind for women business owners who want support making the kinds of decisions that move a business forward. Yes, we talk strategy, but we also look at the bigger picture like mental load, health, profit, and long-term sustainability.

My goal is to help women build businesses that pay them well, support their lives, and still feel worth leading 10 years from now.

Connect with me:
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Transcript

Jennifer Kok (00:01.004)

Welcome Ashley with the Boutique Hub to the show. I'm so excited to talk with you today.

Ashley Alderson (00:05.942)

excited Jennifer, this is gonna be so good.

Jennifer Kok (00:08.494)

So you are the mastermind behind the Boutique Hub and you pour into thousands and thousands of boutique owners across the world. But take us back to the beginning. I know you started this in 2013. What was the problem you were seeing in the boutique industry or what made you think, okay, something has to change here. We need to do some things differently.

Ashley Alderson (00:28.8)

Yeah. You know what's so funny? I think that there's this misconception that when you start a business, you're going to like have this grand plan and you're going to have it all laid out on paper and what you think is going to happen is going to happen, right? And then you get into it you're like, Whoa, there's definitely a pivot that's going to take place. So all the way back to the foundation of the boutique hub, honestly, I started the boutique hub from the consumer point of view, where I grew up in rural North Dakota, like literally 80 miles from a town with a stoplight. There was

Little, a little bit of retail, but not a lot. And so I fell in love with boutiques when I was traveling after college and some of the first careers I had. I loved these unique retailers all over the world. So whether it was downtown of a big city or a vendor booth set up at a rodeo in Reno or wherever I was traveling, I was like, wow, these cool shops, like I want to be able to find more of them. But when I would get back home to North Dakota, there was no way to find them.

And so I always had this idea of starting like an online shopping mall, the boutiques for people like me who were in the Midwest or, you know, I always thought like you were trendy if you were like East coast, West coast, but what about everyone in between? So that was the problem I was actually trying to solve was for the consumer. So when I had an opportunity, I kind of took our life savings as a married couple. had two little kids at the time and we were moving from North Dakota to Wisconsin. And I was like, Eric, I'm gonna

I'm going to build this dream I've always had and I'm going to create this online shopping mall of boutiques. I'm going to, I'm to go all in on this thing." And so he did. He trusted me with this idea. I built this website, found a random web developer to help me out, like literally everything from scratch. And then I was stuck because I had like a chicken and an egg. I didn't have enough boutiques to get enough people like me to come shop. I didn't have enough people like me to get more boutiques. And I had this website that just didn't work. And so when I just started to talk to, you know, the boutiques that I was coming from,

across in my day to day life, I just kept asking them like, what are you struggling with? Like, what do you need help with? And what I found was every boutique owner that I talked to, they were a former teacher, nurse, stay at home mom, like literally nobody, no one went to school for business. You know, nobody had that background. No one plans this is what they're going to do. And they just needed help. And so I was like, well, my background's marketing and PR, and I worked in economic development, business development. I didn't even own a boutique, but I was like, Hey, I can help you. I can teach you what I know.

Jennifer Kok (02:31.075)

Right.

Ashley Alderson (02:45.792)

And I'm a huge networker. I'm like, whatever I don't know, I can find somebody else who does. So I just started to help people and literally like for free for about a year, just serving, serving, serving, just trying to see where the need was with no like real defined plan of what this was going to be. And finally, I was like, okay, this is it. I'm actually going to create. I didn't even know what a membership site was. Nobody talked about that business model. Like it was not a thing. It was not trendy.

There was no templates for it. Like I just wanted to build this thing that I knew was going to be the boutique hub. People could subscribe to it and I could just help people every single month with whatever it is they need in community over competition and help them grow their business. And so this was like two years kind of after my initial concept, I pivoted and created the boutique hub as it is today, which is the go-to resource for every type of retailer, independent retailer, e-commerce brick and mortar in the world to help find the latest in business strategy, education.

tools, community, resources, networking data, all the things under one roof. So the initial concept didn't work that I had, but the pivot and really solving people's problems once I got into it, that's what really worked.

Jennifer Kok (03:55.149)

And it's working because you have a large team and you have thousands of retailers. And I'm just laughing because I can picture your husband Eric going, OK, Ashley, you're now giving away everything for free. Yeah. You know, when are you going to start making some money at this? But it sounds like your gifts, you were very visionary. You are a problem solver and you were hungry to go find those answers. And you know, I started a bakery and I didn't even like to bake. So there you go.

Ashley Alderson (04:07.436)

my gosh. Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (04:23.278)

Right, there you go. So anyone who's listening and is thinking, oh, I want to start a business, but I don't know what to do. You don't necessarily have to have a skill set in that. But your background served you well for when you launched this. So you launched it with this idea of community-led before it was trendy. earlier, you and I were talking about when I started my business, we built in silos. We were very afraid of our competition.

Ashley Alderson (04:38.358)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (04:50.336)

we would, you know, that was just kind of the culture.

of when I first started my first bakery. And that is no longer the case. We live in a world now where we know that relations are going to be what's going to make us successful and help us be successful. But you were teaching that way before it was buzzword, it was kind of our new culture. So take us through what you mean by community-led. And there's no competition here. We are all retailers. We're all boutiques, no matter where you are, just trying to grow.

Ashley Alderson (04:55.884)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Alderson (05:22.656)

Yeah. Well, since, 2013, our motto has been community over competition and you know, very similar. The boutique industry was very siloed when I first started and we would go to wholesale trade shows. And if you were buying apparel or if you were buying a candle line or whatever, know, you would go in and you would kind of like pull your pieces and you would hide your rack and you didn't want anyone to see what you were buying, you know, cause they might steal your idea. And it took a long time, but people were very open to the idea of breaking down those silos.

Jennifer Kok (05:44.098)

Great.

Ashley Alderson (05:52.595)

And really the story that I led with and the thing that really opened my eyes to this was back before I started the boutique hub, I worked in economic development and in the city that I was in small town, North Dakota, very small. there was two retail stores. There was a Western store and then there was like kind of a department store that had an embroidery business with it. And the Western store came to my office one day and they announced they were going out of business. They were retiring. They wanted to close up and

I was like, okay, you know, taking it in stride, what are we going to do helping them with strategies? The next day, the department store across the street came into my office and they said, what are we going to do? We have to find somebody to go into that space. We can not let this store across the street close. And I was kind of dumbfounded and I was like, wait, like why wouldn't you want that? Like your competition is going out of business. This is more customers for you. You can pick up their product lines. There should be opportunity. And they were like, no, you don't understand.

wherever two or more like businesses come together, we create a shopping destination. And it was like, like light bulbs went off in my head. was like, wow. You know, if, if it's kind of like going to Walmart, right? If you walk down the bread aisle or the wine aisle, you're like, how are there this many brands of cab? Like all this red wine, who's drinking all this red wine? But if you drink red wine, you know, there's more than enough to go around. Like,

let's just create more people who want to drink the red wine. And then we've got plenty of red wine to sell to them. And business is the same way. The challenge for me was how do I create more people who love to shop boutiques and then let's strengthen the boutiques to give them more opportunity to shop. So in community over competition, our retailers came into the boutique hub, literally sharing everything. Like what are your best brands? What are the trends you're seeing right now? What promotions are you running? What's working? What's not.

Like literally stores from around the world are sharing ideas and their best practices with one another because they know it's not about being in competition. They know it's about creating stronger boutiques so that there's more people to shop boutiques, which is good for everybody. back then it was like there was no internet either. Like there was not a lot of opportunity to seek out that information. you know, we freely gave that today information's everywhere. The difference between who's being successful and who's not is who's willing to take the action.

Jennifer Kok (07:55.938)

Right.

Jennifer Kok (08:08.054)

And you know, I love that because we are in a world where it's so easy just to order from Amazon and order from, you know, the big guys and the boutiques, know, well, you know, me, my passion is small business, the community led businesses, because to me, they're the heart and center of our communities. Just like those two stores in North Dakota, they were the heart and center of your community. They brought people out of their house into your little downtown street. And we need.

Ashley Alderson (08:21.963)

Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (08:35.18)

to be promoting and helping our small businesses more than ever now. So I love this concept of let's not be in competition. There's plenty of dollars to go around for everybody. And it reminds me of the old CVS and Walgreens. If you see a CVS on one corner, the kitty corner is a Walgreens drugstore. That's just always been their concept because they're not afraid that there's not enough dollars to go around.

They're just showing you your brand. So as you were building this, it wasn't all rosy, it wasn't all super easy along the way. And you talk about how it can be really intimidating as a new business owner. And like you said earlier, most of us don't start out thinking we're going to be entrepreneurs.

Ashley Alderson (09:06.444)

Hmm.

Ashley Alderson (09:10.956)

you

Jennifer Kok (09:18.006)

We have a path where we go into trade school or we go into college or we do something and we think that's what we're going to be doing. And then somewhere along the way we choose entrepreneurship. And you talk about early on how you really kind of struggled with that trust in yourself and you felt a little bit of what we call imposter syndrome, which is where you feel like.

Ashley Alderson (09:24.94)

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Kok (09:39.914)

I don't deserve to be here. Who am I to run this business? So you brought in a partner? Is that what your decision was at the time?

Ashley Alderson (09:46.602)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I don't even know that I would call it a partner. think in my mind, that's what I thought it was gonna be. But what happened, know, back in that gap that I was telling you about where I started the initial idea of the hub and it wasn't working, wasn't working, and I couldn't figure out why it was the chicken and the egg. And then I pivoted to, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. What happened in that gap was really interesting because that's where I really fought imposter syndrome because this idea wasn't taking off. And so I thought, well,

Who am I to start this business? You know, I'm not even a boutique owner. I just know that there's a problem I want to solve. And so I started to seek out, surely there's someone smarter than me that's been here before. You know, they're honestly, at that time there were female business owners, there were female founders, but there was none of them out in the forefront. There was nobody really leading the path for women either. So I felt like, gosh, you know, there's, there's gotta be a man who can help me with this. And I can't believe this at this day and age, like we're still talking about that, but that was definitely very true in 2013.

Jennifer Kok (10:44.895)

And honestly, not that long ago, when you think about it. Yeah.

Ashley Alderson (10:46.823)

And it's not that long ago. No, it's, it's pretty amazing. And now we have so many amazing women yourself. mean, so many women on the internet that you can follow and search that are just more vocal about their journey. But again, back then there wasn't. So literally you're going to laugh when I say this, but I met a guy on Twitter of all places, a Twitter who I was like, wow, this guy, know, he's kind of in the same industry as me. He's trying to do something very similar. It seems very knowledgeable.

He's been involved with startups before he's exited like, he must know what's going on. So I meet this person online. live across country from each other and we start this online relationship and we're like, wow, like let's team up. Let's join forces. Let's do all this stuff. And I let this person convince me that I was going to give away 51 % of my company that I had already started that I already had email lists, Facebook groups.

branding, like I had a product, I had all these things, I had money, I these things in the, in place. And I let him convince me that I was going to give this business half of it away. And the funniest thing happened. So we kept working together and building our product, you know, and verbally I told him this, well, then no paperwork ever came, ever came in the mail and he kept saying, oh yeah, like it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. And I'm like, ah, this is really weird. And it started to get fishy after a while. And finally it was, I'll never forget, it was Christmas time that year. And

finally my husband and I were like, you know what, like something's off. I'm going to put the brakes on this. And so I called this person and my husband was in the background and I was like, you know what, I just don't think this is real. Like, I don't think this is going to work. I feel like you're taking advantage of me here. Like I don't want any part of this. And this person freaked out, hung up on me and immediately blocked me from my email list. My Facebook groups, drain my bank account, drain the PayPal account, took everything that I had started and like ghosted me.

Jennifer Kok (12:38.403)

wow.

Ashley Alderson (12:39.308)

Like it was a total like a catfish situation. And I mean, I'm like North Dakota nice. So I would have never imagined somebody was going to do something like that to me. And they did. And so then, I don't know, I honestly, like at that moment you're kind of like, okay, do I, is this a sign? Should I just quit? Like, I didn't think I could do this from the first place. Yeah. I give my husband a ton of credit because it was literally several days of me laying on the couch.

Jennifer Kok (12:58.667)

Right, how do you keep going? How do you keep going when you're so devastated like that?

Ashley Alderson (13:08.504)

I had two toddlers at the time I had a newborn baby. She wasn't a year old yet. And I just remember laying there like devastated, like what do I do? And Eric was so good. I never forget he came up to me one day. was laying on the couch. I can still vividly see him standing above me and he's like, you know what? I can understand if you want to quit and if you want to walk away, I'll fully support you in that. But I also understand if you want to keep fighting and if you want to make this happen, I'll support you in that too.

Jennifer Kok (13:09.227)

Hmm.

Ashley Alderson (13:38.039)

You just have to decide. And I was like, okay, well, I guess, you know, I don't think I know, you know, all the things, but I do know how to put one foot in front of the other. Like I can figure out one step at a time. Like I can just get up and try one thing. And so literally that day I got up and I had an old Facebook group that I had like closed to open this new, new one with this person together that we were going to rebrand. And so I reopened this old Facebook group.

And I still had like probably 300 boutique owners in it that I had been serving before I met this person. And I just started to talk to them. Like I didn't tell anyone what had happened. I, nobody knew for years what had happened. I just started to serve them. Like, what do you need? Asking them questions, getting to the root of their business, solving their problems, just serve, serve, serve. And it took me, that was probably midway through, you know, that point of struggle. took me about a year, year and a half.

And then finally, that's what led me to, okay, I've got this figured out. I could serve these people. I can open this membership. I can build a boutique up as to what I've always wanted it to be. And so I did. So I launched it. The craziest thing happened next. So I launched this business to what the boutique of is today. One of the things I'd always wanted to do was I was going to have a business conference for retailers. And I told this person that was my plan. Well, wouldn't you know it. He decided he was going to launch a business conference for retailers, you know, after he'd taken everything from me.

Jennifer Kok (15:01.281)

Sure.

Ashley Alderson (15:02.016)

He sold all these expensive tickets. These women had bought plane tickets. They were on their way to, I don't even know what city it was. And the day that people were leaving their homes to get on the plane, he canceled the event and kept all of their money and then went black, like went dark. And so all of a sudden all these women were like, what just happened to us? And now they started to come back to me and they were like, whoa, okay, you guys went two different directions. Did this happen to you too? And I said, yes, this happened to me too.

Jennifer Kok (15:18.871)

Wow.

Ashley Alderson (15:31.582)

And so that was kind of the end of that chapter, like that kind of closed the door on that chapter. And I was like, okay, full steam ahead. Now I'm pissed. Like I'm mad that you did it to me, but I'm double pissed that you did it to them. And so full steam ahead into what I'm building and how can I just serve these people even more? So it was a, it was a terrible situation, but it turned into probably one of the more positive things that ever happened to me because it gave me the belief in myself that I could actually do this.

Jennifer Kok (15:41.43)

Right.

Jennifer Kok (15:58.636)

And you know, Ashley, first of all, mean, what a train wreck and I kudos to you for getting off that couch because moments like that can define us and we can either choose to fight through it. And I love that you had the support of your husband and the belief of your husband to say, you know what, either way we're good. But you know, that kind of lighted your fire, you know, lit that fire a little bit again, but there was so many, there's so many interesting things about what happened to you. First of all, you were craving a roadmap.

That's what you were craving. You wanted someone to come alongside you and say, step A, step B, step C, step D, this is what we do. And entrepreneurs need that. We all crave that. And unfortunately, the person that you thought was going to be the one to give you the roadmap turned out to be evil and not obviously dishonest. thankfully, you had the intuition to shut it down when you did, because who knows how much more he would have gotten access to. But I love how you just showed up.

Ashley Alderson (16:34.155)

Yeah.

Ashley Alderson (16:53.52)

man, yeah.

Jennifer Kok (16:57.485)

and you said, I'm going to just serve. Because there's a lot of businesses out there right now who might be feeling a little stuck. I call it the messy middle. What got us where we are today? Is it going to get us where we are to go in tomorrow? And we don't know what to do. And a lot of times, we always look at results. said, what are the dollars? And sometimes that can beat us up. Where if we just flip it.

and say, know what, this is what I built, this is my product or service, these are my people, and I'm just gonna show up today, and then I'm show up again tomorrow, and I'm gonna show up the next day, and I'm just gonna keep serving. You know, I had a client who, she does events, and she's very busy at the holidays, and all summer long, she kept saying to me,

This feels very quiet. There's not, I'm not getting any results. I'm, you know, getting coached by you and nothing's happening. And I just kept saying, trust the process. Just keep showing up every day. Well, then I got a message just yesterday, because you and I are recording this in December. And she was like, holy cow. Like everything just opened up.

Ashley Alderson (18:02.768)

man.

Jennifer Kok (18:03.434)

And so that's what you did. You just kept showing up for your people and then it took a while, you know? And I think that's something we have to remember is we have, we go into business with these expectations that we're going to get rich tomorrow. That doesn't happen. It takes time and sometimes it takes years.

Ashley Alderson (18:09.142)

Took a while. Yeah.

Yes. No.

amen. And I see this in our community every day. I think the internet has perpetuated this lie that it's instant gratification that you're going to start this business. It's going to take off. You're going to solve all your problems. You're finally going to find happiness and joy and fulfillment. And that's not true. It's a lie. It's hard. Business is hard. So if you're not willing to walk through the hard, go get a day job. And there's nothing wrong with that. I don't shame anyone for that.

Jennifer Kok (18:27.885)

Yes.

Ashley Alderson (18:50.118)

you have to be a little bit crazy to want to be a business owner, frankly, but it's worth it. Like it's worth it to be a little bit crazy because if you can put up with the hard, if you can walk through those difficult seasons, if you have the tenacity to keep showing up when no one's buying and no one's watching, then you've got what it takes to make something really special. But yeah, you, you also, I would say have to be so in love with the problem you're solving. Like there's be so in love with the people you're serving and how you can help them.

Jennifer Kok (18:54.318)

you

Yeah.

Ashley Alderson (19:18.662)

more than you're in love with the money in the bank. Because if you really solve someone's problem, the money in the bank will always follow, but you can't have it the other way around. If you're so focused on the money, you lose sight of what the problem is. And all of a sudden you're just chasing dollars and that's not really sustainable. It doesn't really work. So I think you've got to that in the right order. And then when you show up to solve and solve and solve, then you've got to have a support system or a coach or somebody who can say, okay, now, now that you're solving problems and you've built a community and you've built a following, now let's make sure your offer.

Jennifer Kok (19:35.502)

So true.

Ashley Alderson (19:48.682)

and your pricing strategy is appropriate so that you can pay yourself what you need to survive, thrive, and grow this business.

Jennifer Kok (19:55.999)

Amen. Love it. So girl, you went full steam ahead and one of the coolest things that you did was created Pink Friday. Will you tell us about where that came from and what is Pink Friday and where that idea, like, did, where did that vision come from?

Ashley Alderson (20:12.94)

Well, I'm always so amazed. love that you brought it up and you were like, I know people who participated. I'm so thankful to hear that because it's an idea that did take off. And I really hope it just continues to build steam and momentum. So again, rooted in the idea of community over competition, um, going back to 2020, we all know what 2020 was like in terms of business and the world. And it was just crazy time out there and leading into that holiday season, we were like, we've got to do something special and different this year in community over competition.

We've got to lean on each other. need each other more than ever. And we already knew at that time that so many people in retail and small business owners, they were already doing their holiday launches and open houses and VIP parties long before Black Friday. They were already doing all the marketing. And so we thought, well, why don't we team up and do something together early just like this? Because no shade to small business Saturday. I love it. I think it's amazing. Thank you, Amex for creating it.

The only beef I have with it is I hate that it's an afterthought. I hate that it comes second. You know, on Black Friday, everyone's already gone to the big box stores and they've spent all their money. And now it's kind of like, well, I'll bring the crumbs and whatever I've got left to a few small businesses on Saturday. And it's just not enough. And so the idea behind Pink Friday is shop small first, like make small businesses or local businesses, whatever your first thought when it comes to buying gifts, buying for yourself.

you know, whatever you're to do during the holiday season. So shop small first is really the tagline, support small first before Black Friday. So we team up, there's about 10,000 small businesses that we had participate this year, literally around the world in eight countries. And this year we did something really big where we were like, well, we want people to participate. We're going to give them free resources, marketing, all of this to tell their story, press releases so they can work with the local media on Pink Friday.

But we wanted to do more than that. So we teamed up with an organization called Heart on Main Street, which is a nonprofit that donates money back to stores that have been destroyed by natural disasters. So the floods, the hurricanes, the tornadoes, all the things. And so for every store that signed up this year on pinkfridayweekend.com or thebootiehub.com, you can sign up both places. We donated a dollar back per store to this entity so that we can hopefully all team up and do good for the retail industry going forward.

Jennifer Kok (22:19.949)

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Kok (22:37.282)

that's so awesome. So Pink Friday is the Friday before Black Friday. wait. OK. And I love it. And like you said, it's a directory, a place for us to come together. And I love how you said, shop small first. That is really powerful, because you're right. Let's start there. And if they don't have what you're looking for, then go elsewhere. But the idea of starting there first is so huge. And what a great that you use this to benefit community.

Ashley Alderson (22:41.62)

Always. Yes.

Ashley Alderson (23:05.9)

Thank you. Yeah, it's a great, I mean it's all about community over competition, so the more we can work together the better.

Jennifer Kok (23:08.812)

Right.

Okay, so let's get into some practical help for our boutique owners. You your boutique hub offers all sorts of research and education. And one thing you talk a lot about is essential pieces of content for product-based businesses. And you narrow that down to, you have like six, is that what you share?

Ashley Alderson (23:14.41)

Yeah. Okay.

Ashley Alderson (23:32.779)

I do. Yes. So I think one of the most important things, I'm sure you can agree on this. One of the most important ways to scale is we have to have a great content strategy, right? There has to be not just content, but the strategy that backs it up, the why behind it. And it's also one of the most overwhelming things as business owners that we have to do. You know, you're already wearing so many hats, running your business and managing team and finances and inventory and all the things. so sometimes showing up to say, what am going to post on Instagram today?

is like an afterthought. You're like, crap, like I don't really want to, you know, but you have to. So all of all these businesses that we've worked with, we've really narrowed it down to say what works best for everyone. Like what are the standards that everybody should be looking at in terms of what the content strategy is. And then that strategy that we built really was amplified this year because Facebook meta announced their brand new algorithm named Andromeda.

And Andromeda like really doubles down on this fact that we have to be content creators first in business. Content is changing so fast. We have multiple types. We have to have multiple backgrounds. We have to have multiple messages. You know, it just takes so much more content to get noticed in the algorithm these days. So I think that only, you know, highlights how important these six different pieces are. So what they are, if I was going to go across the board, piece number one is live video.

So there's so many studies and TikTok has really blown this up. mean, Facebook was the first one to the game, but live video is an essential piece of everyone's content strategy. Number one, it humanizes your brand. builds relationship. It builds connection, builds a sense of community, right? But it also drives notifications and puts you first in the bubble or first in the feed, wherever it's gonna be. So live video has to be piece number one.

Jennifer Kok (25:22.006)

Okay, I just heard a ton of people just go, really? I thought maybe the algorithm was changing and I didn't have to do that anymore, but you're telling us get on live and.

Ashley Alderson (25:29.312)

Yeah, you have to. Yes. And if you, you know, if you're a millennial or older, you're like, but wait, can I just stick to the pretty aesthetic photos in my feed that all look nice together and pretend that my life is perfect? No, people hate perfect. Nobody wants perfect. So the messier, the more awkward you are. If you're like Ricky, Ricky Bobby, and you're like, I don't know what to do with my hands. Fine. Like

Jennifer Kok (25:45.582)

I

Ashley Alderson (25:54.465)

Do it, like lean into your awkward self because that's what's most relatable with your customers. Nobody buys perfection. People want to buy people who they see themselves in. So if you're a little quirky and awkward and uncomfortable and nervous, fine, because your customers would be too. So it totally makes sense.

Jennifer Kok (26:09.742)

I love it. So humanize the business, get on live. Love it. All right.

Ashley Alderson (26:13.568)

Get on live piece of content. Number two is short form video. So short form video is so beautiful. It can be repurposed in so many different ways, whether it's reels, tick tocks, Pinterest, YouTube shorts, really create one. And you should use it in every single one of those areas. And then if you're running an ad strategy, we're leveraging all of those in ads as well. So short form content, you know, it might be relatable content. That's just funny. Like it's trending sounds. It might be educational content. So

You're teaching me how to use something, how to wear something, how to bake something, how to style something. it might be a day in the life, like behind the scenes, again, humanizing your brand. So, you know, go with me to the bakery to open the bakery and bake for a birthday party today or whatever that might be. But short form video is that thing that's going to catch our attention in the algorithm. Piece of content. Number three is your product photos. So yes, I'm saying be relatable, be messy, be all those things.

just please have some decent product photos, like good lighting, make yourself look professional. Don't throw a bunch of crap on the floor, snap a picture or don't just like take a picture of your window display and go, whoop, done. If I'm actually going to buy something, think about every single website you've bought off of Amazon or boutiques website, whatever. Like you've literally bought something off of a professional photo where the item is styled and you can picture yourself in the item or using the item or you know, it makes sense. It's got a white background, whatever it is.

So product photos are essential for social media, but then also for your e-commerce business. So every week when I'm walking through this list, I'm saying, okay, well, what's my new inventory that I need to capture photos for? But then also what's my aged inventory? What's been sitting here and I need to get it back in front of people again, because it hasn't turned at my effective turn rate yet. So new and aged product photos every week.

Jennifer Kok (28:01.728)

And anyone who's ever taken product photos knows that it can be a little challenging. don't, you know, no matter what white drop you have or whatever, it, but you said good lighting is probably the key to that.

Ashley Alderson (28:11.212)

Yeah, good natural lighting is absolutely what you need. If you can have just like a clean, clear, crisp background with some natural lighting or get some ring lights, whatever you need, it's definitely doable. And you don't need a fancy camera. know, an iPhone will do wonders. Like the new cameras, they're pretty dang good. So go with an iPhone. Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (28:27.926)

Yeah, they are. Isn't that amazing? All right, awesome. And okay, so number four.

Ashley Alderson (28:33.13)

Yep. Number four is, quotes and memes. So the algorithm wants to know that you are relatable to people and product photos are great, but not everyone is ready to buy, right? Like 3 % of your audience is ready to buy right now. So how do you keep people engaged in the algorithm when they're not in buying mode and that's quotes and memes. So it might be, you know, inspirational quote of some kind. It can't be boring. If you're going to use quotes and memes, it has to be something that people don't know how to say.

or they aren't brave enough to say. Like it has to speak for them. But if it's like, happy hump day, happy Friday, like nobody cares, right? Like talk to me about Spanx and muffin tops and body image and burning your elf on the shelf. Like talk to me about the things that I really wanna talk about that aren't boring. quotes or just funny memes, things are relatable. This also might be engagement questions. So asking your...

Jennifer Kok (29:09.463)

Yeah.

Ashley Alderson (29:31.468)

community questions just to get them talking to you, whether that's in a Facebook group or a Facebook page or Instagram stories or on Tik TOK, like just ask a question and let people respond.

Jennifer Kok (29:42.616)

When you say memes, do you have to create them yourself or can you use somebody else's?

Ashley Alderson (29:46.913)

You can definitely share other people's. Yeah. Yep. I also think about this, like sharing, sharing other people's short form video content. Like I'm sharing things to my stories all the time from other people. So I think it's important that you can share from other people, but you can also share your own. One of the main reasons this is important, honestly, if we were going to talk about Instagram specifically is Instagram's algorithm, you know what the highest weight you get in the algorithm is on Instagram is not likes and it's not comments.

Jennifer Kok (29:48.59)

Okay.

Jennifer Kok (30:13.069)

What is that?

Ashley Alderson (30:16.318)

It's the little button that's the save button and it's the little airplane that's the shared a story button. So when Instagram says, wow, you know, Jennifer created content that other people like so much. They're sharing it or they're saving it for themselves to come back to later. They're like, people really want to see more of her stuff. So that's where that engagement content is. People aren't sharing your product photos to their story and they aren't, you know, saving your product photos so they can come back and remember it. They're just scrolling by it.

Jennifer Kok (30:21.293)

Ashley Alderson (30:45.196)

So you have to create something else to get them to engage.

Jennifer Kok (30:47.821)

Right, recipes, so if you look at my Instagram, all these saved recipes that I always forget to go back to and look at, but that's really interesting. So think about your content in a way that someone could share.

Okay, good stuff. All right, that brings us to five.

Ashley Alderson (31:04.318)

Yeah. All right. Five is also one of my favorites. It's along the same lines of engagement and that's personal stories. So whatever season you're in, I want you just to think about like you as the face of your business and relating to your customer and what they're going through right now. So as we're recording this, it's the holiday season. So I'm laughing because one of my best friends was moving her elf on the shelf recently and she got up on a stool late at night to move it and she fell off the stool and she broke her foot.

Jennifer Kok (31:32.886)

that poor girl.

Ashley Alderson (31:34.413)

So she's like, she's mad and she's embarrassed and she wants to burn this freaking elf on the shelf. And so I'm like, my gosh, like that is such a funny personal story. Her sharing that, how many other moms would be like, I totally relate. Like that gives me permission to burn this thing. I don't ever want to do it again. To me, that personal story is just humanizing your brand. It's building community. It's building trust. It's building connection. It has nothing to do with us selling anything, her selling anything. Like it's just a personal story that's relatable to the community.

Jennifer Kok (31:39.476)

Yeah!

Ashley Alderson (32:03.004)

And in marketing, if we want to stay top of mind, like it's the emotion that we create in our audience that keeps us there. That's what keeps us coming back for more is that connection, that community, trust. So those personal stories, no matter what time of the year it is, just build something to relate to your community.

Jennifer Kok (32:18.989)

That's that's so good and that poor poor woman with that off on the shelf. Hopefully this was the last year for that and their family

Ashley Alderson (32:25.066)

I know, I know, get rid of it. All right, the last one is collections. So people don't buy products, people buy solutions to their problems. And so I just actually, before I got on this podcast recording today, I was reading an article about the brand Free People and their business performance over the last year, what worked and what didn't and why. And they went through their promotions calendar for the last 12 months and highlighted

Jennifer Kok (32:28.013)

And that leads us to the last one.

Ashley Alderson (32:52.96)

all the different collections they dropped in 12 months and what once performed the best. And it was always like a new launch, a new product line or a new collaboration with like some off, you know, offshoot product. so collections to me might be, you know, color. It might be a trend. So bows or camo or leopard. It might be where I'm going and how I would use a product, right? So like.

resort wear or home for the holidays or whatever. If I'm thinking about apparel or I mean in baking, right? We might think about the different holidays we're, we're hosting or birthdays or Halloween, you know, or Christmas cookies, all of those things. So group your products together in a way that solves people's problem and then create a product launch where you're launching this collection of things together. So people have multiple items to choose from. If we're just relying on new arrivals, new this week, nobody cares.

Jennifer Kok (33:47.725)

Yeah. Right. So this collections, I heard you say, would this be a good example? Like let's use my daughter's business. She sells online baby and adult bamboo pajamas. And that's it. That's pajamas. So could a collection be partnered with another business that would sell maybe slippers, you know, something that would be, you know, would coordinate nice and kind of compliment what she sells. Is that what you would suggest?

Ashley Alderson (33:48.724)

It's boring, everyone's got new arrivals. You have to do something different.

Ashley Alderson (34:03.114)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Alderson (34:15.754)

Yeah. Well, so a couple of things. One, if she was just looking internal to her own business, she's obviously going to launch the Halloween pajama collection and the Christmas pajama collection. And she's probably going to launch gift bundle collections over the holidays, right? All of those things that are internal, Mother's Day collection, all that. But it's also, like you said, an external collaboration. So this is where the, you know, rounding us back to community over competition.

Jennifer Kok (34:39.447)

Right.

Ashley Alderson (34:40.478)

What's another business that's in a kind of a similar or adjacent category that we could collaborate and share our audiences with? So if it's a slipper company, okay, great. Let's go back to market and where are we ordering our product from? Could we white label something that's co-branded? You know, could it be the this business by that business collection? So the Nike Skims collection is a great example in terms of, you know, apparel and big retail like Nike and Skims coming together for a collection is pretty awesome. So

Jennifer Kok (35:07.629)

Right.

Ashley Alderson (35:08.3)

who could you collaborate with and then you could leverage one another's audiences for growth.

Jennifer Kok (35:12.898)

Wow, OK, so great stuff. And one last question on content. When you look at where boutique owners are hanging out platform-wise, are you seeing Instagram is where the growth is? And one other question to piggyback onto that. Do a lot of boutiques, is Facebook Groups an option for them? Is that a place to hang out and grow an audience? Or is that going to be a little maybe dated or also a lot of work?

Ashley Alderson (35:39.651)

man, great questions. So first I would say the most important question to ask yourself is who's your customer and where's my customer hanging out? That changes things, right? Like a lot of people will say, well, do I need to be on TikTok? Well, maybe not. Maybe you need to double down on where you know your customer is right now. The truth is the data shows us that Facebook, despite its old original status, is still the highest converting platform. The majority of people who are buying and spending money are still on Facebook. So for us,

Jennifer Kok (36:03.552)

Okay.

Ashley Alderson (36:08.256)

Facebook groups, still huge. You still have more reach inside of a Facebook group than you do on a page. There's still an opportunity there to create a community and a sense of relationship amongst your customers. So I would double down on that. Instagram, the hardest part about Instagram is it's not the clickable links as easy as it is on Facebook. They've gotten better. There's more opportunities for links at this point. And Instagram stories, I would say, would be the most important part of Instagram.

Jennifer Kok (36:27.918)

Right.

Ashley Alderson (36:35.584)

The feed, like not as many people scroll the Instagram feed any longer, but they do look at stories. And stories are a lot like a Facebook group where you can kind of build a sense of community. So you have to make sure you build that into your strategy where you're using user generated content, you're sharing and highlighting your customers, you're doing questions of the day, and then you're sharing people's responses, or you're doing polls and you're sharing people's responses, or you're collaborating with others and you're tagging, you know, and using all the Instagram features inside of Instagram stories.

So Facebook, Instagram definitely still number one and number two. And then again, depending on your demographic, TikTok is a great audience. It's a great platform, but frankly at this day and age, the buyer on TikTok wants a little bit lesser price product and they have a massive return rate. So you have to be set up in order to take volume at low cost and be willing to deal with the returns. So that's kind of an iffy subject. So if that's you, great.

Double down on it, right? But if it's not, that's okay too. Maybe you're just doing an offshoot of your brand on Instagram. So double down Facebook, Instagram, and then I would say run ads. Ads this year performed higher than they ever have. We have an entire program at the boutique hub called boutique of black, where we teach people how to run their own ads. You don't need a big expensive agency. You literally can do it yourself in a couple of minutes a day. So just amplify what you're already working on.

Jennifer Kok (37:39.266)

Wow.

Jennifer Kok (37:56.595)

my gosh, Ashley, great stuff. So thank you so much for really pouring into boutiques and small businesses. You know, I just, I just love your heart. And you know, the last question I just want to ask you is what do think the long game is for boutique owners? Like where do you see boutiques going in the next year or two?

Ashley Alderson (38:17.28)

my gosh. Chris, the ball question. you know, I think the boutiques that are in it for the long run really want to build a brand, right? It's not just about flipping products and finding something that's successful now, but they want to build a brand that they're known for. A lot of them, the longer they run, the bigger they get. They are going into white labeling and creating their own product lines, their own unique pieces, their own iterations. They aren't just buying from a wholesaler and reselling.

but they're literally starting to create their own lines along with their business. So I think that's what's long-term sustainable. And then you've got to find somebody else to help run the business long-term as well. Burnout can be a real thing in this industry, especially if you're the face of the business. So you have to find help that can take the majority of the work off your plate so you can be where you need to be. But it's okay to introduce other faces along with yours so that you don't completely burn yourself out along.

Jennifer Kok (38:58.734)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Kok (39:13.006)

Oh, good stuff. All right, thank you so much, Ashley. This has been very informative. I love your story, but also very informative for our listeners. And if folks want to learn more, I will put the BoutiqueHub.com in the show notes. And anywhere else, a great place to connect with you.

Ashley Alderson (39:25.356)

Thank you.

Ashley Alderson (39:29.444)

well the boutique up.com has got all the deets, but we love to hang out on Instagram. So come follow us at the boutique hub or personally me and all the behind the scenes of kids life running a business like this. it's at AJ Alderson on Instagram.

Jennifer Kok (39:42.506)

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and I really appreciate you being on today.

Ashley Alderson (39:46.395)

Thank you for having me.