Boost Your Boutique with Emily Benson

If you're wondering how to get out of small business debt, how to manage your business debt, or how to build a debt-free boutique business, but don't know where to start... this episode is for you! Small business debt is common and not all debt is bad, however it can cause many boutique and small business owners a lot of financial stress when it impacts cash flow or when you don't know how to pay...

If you’ve ever struggled with how to manage your boutique business finances or wondered why Profit First doesn’t work for your business, then you’ll want to watch the entire video to learn my secret strategies to make Profit First by Mike Michalowicz work for your product selling business. If you want to become a successful boutique owner, then you need to learn accounting basics for boutiques. Th...

Are you ready to make this Black Friday your most successful yet? This episode will help you to prepare for Black Friday as a product-seller or retail business owner.  We are half way to Black Friday! That’s right, at the time this episode is published we are only 6 months away from this pivotal time of year for product-sellers, and while it might feel a bit early to be thinking about Black F...

Do you want to make more profit from your products in 2024? I’m breaking down three secret ways to discover profitable products in 2024, tailored for boutique owners, wholesalers, and retailers.  ➡️ Get all the details and sign up for Profit Power Tools here If you’re a product seller who has had your business for a number of years and are doing well, but you want to generate enough profit to...

Your Boutique Can Be Profitable: Everything You Need to Know About Profit Power Tools Big news! Today, I'm sharing my excitement about my new Profit Power Tools program and its why it's a game changing program for boutique owners, wholesalers and independent retailers. ➡️ Get all the details and add your name to the waitlist here! • Introduction to Profit Power Tools program: Are you a product bus...

11:45.1 We did what we wanted.  We did it pretty professionally and we did it with like a level of class and style where people took us seriously. 11:58.2 We had access to these amazing creative tools, professors who really pushed us, who gave us Tons of access and free time to play and explore with our art. And like our minds were just so rich. And I think you and I, and our whole friend gro...

Want to watch this on YouTube? Click here to go to my YouTube Channel Want to sign up for Reels for Retail? Click here to learn more and sign up. Buy The Ultimate Boutique Handbook on Amazon Buy The Retail Mindset on Amazon Mentioned in this episode: Work on Your Shop Event- September 21, 2025 Work|on your|shop is a one-day, in-person experience designed to reset your mindset and give you the exac...

0:54.6 If you're an influencer or if you are in a position where you are ready to start manufacturing your own clothing and accessories or you already do and you want a different take on it and you want to hear from people who are really in the day to day of what's coming next, they're a little bit right ahead of the curve, you're going to want to listen to this episode. 4:24.3 We're now working w...

0:51.0 Our promise to you today is that we hope you will open your mind to adding more plus size to your retail store as a vendor and how to do it in a way that's going to make you money. 3:08.6 I think sizing is one of the most challenging aspects of the plus size and extended market. 3:36.7 Extra large is not plus size. No. So there's a different size grade to the plus size demographic. So a 1x...

1:04.0 My name is Darlene Mitchell and I am a retail business strategist. And my strength really is around inventory and profitability. So I help business boutique owners. Understanding inventory strategies so they can have legacy, not just so they can have a business, but they can have a legacy business, a business that stays around.  1:32.8 I was in corporate retail for 25 plus years. And w...

1:22.0 I use retail as a sort of the stepping stone to gain awareness about myself and to build capital. 2:58.1 It's very important that I feel that the clothes that we make are just made for a woman's body, not a specific woman's body, but like just the woman's body. So I pay a lot of attention to where themes are and how long certain sleeves are to make it to make everybody feel like they can we...

1:27.0 So when should you start an email list? Like Day one. Okay. If you don't have an email list or you only have a list of people who purchase from your boutique business, that's fine. 1:38.4 Even if it's 20 people on your list, even if it's five, get signed up with an email service and get going. 1:54.7 What are we doing with email? Why are we doing it? One, we're staying top of mind with cust...

Mentioned in this episode: Work on Your Shop Event- September 21, 2025 Work|on your|shop is a one-day, in-person experience designed to reset your mindset and give you the exact steps to grow your boutique with more ease and clarity. You’ll leave with: ✅ A complete Fall/Winter (or Spring/Summer) buying and marketing plan ✅ A fresh perspective on your numbers and goals ✅ The energy and confidenc...

0:24.5 You don't need a lot of money to start a boutique business. 0:36.6 Let's say that the first way is through dropshipping. There are lots of dropshippers that are now connected through Shopify. So all you have to do is have a Shopify website. 0:55.4 You pay for the good as the person buys for it, but it's a really nice way to start a business with very little money. You will have to pay the S...

0:41.2 One of the things that I know for sure across all of my clients that I work with as a boutique consultant is I want them all to relax. 1:18.4 I think we need to set much better boundaries than we have in the past. And I think a lot of people just were hustling and that's like how they were raised. And that's what patriarchy tells us to do. 2:25.4 So every time you expand, every time you ma...

1:30.6 Pop ups are anything that are temporary or semi permanent. And the idea is that you're going there, you're testing the location, you're testing the audience, and you're seeing if it works for you. 2:25.8 You've got to figure out what the vibe of your customer is going to be so that you know where they're going to be. 2:48.6 You want to study the other vendors that are there. You want to stu...

1:33.0 The thing about having a brick and mortar is you have automatic traffic If you pick a good location, so All the clients that I've ever had open a brick and mortar business, I'm always like pay for traffic, pay for good location, because that's something that you don't automatically get in a mobile business. 1:56.1 If you're in a location that's really rural or has really specific zones wher...

0:24.0 I want to show you why your January negative self talk and your negative, in general, self talk about the economy is,  it's,  it's putting your boutique out of business. 1:24.6 January is a trash month 1:31.8 In the retail world, it is trash, which means you get to take time off.  2:24.9 No, the economy is not bad, your product sucks.  You have a bad product. No one want...

4:09.0 January gets a bad rap. It really needs to be rebranded into January is rest, relaxation, rejuvenation. It's also like organizing, prepping, planning, and at a pace that feels gentle and tender and kind. 8:27.8 So where I see retail and boutiques being really different is retail feels really big.  9:39.2 People that look like they're big time might not be making the money you think the...

1:30.1 This is one of the keys to, I think, the problems that happen among so many boutique owners is you just have so much space. 1:45 But It allows you to overbuy and overbuying is one of the quickest ways to not scale your business to become very much unprofitable and to always be struggling to make the revenue that you want. 1:56.9 So first and foremost, the conversation around assortment has...

1:48.1 With seasonal change, the merchandise has to change. So whether you have clothes, whether you have garden goods, whether you have gifts, it's always going to shift based on the season, right? So that's why January and the J months have this bad rep because they're transition months. 3:53.7 You see really weird activity in January. So you don't want to start your year off that like that. You...

2:17.6 This is the time to talk about it. This is the time to get people behind your cause. 3:06.8 We've got to promote the promotions that we're doing, any sales, discounts, events. events we have to promote,  but we also can't forget that we have to educate our customers. 3:36.8 What matters is how you show up for them. What matters is how you present your offer to them. 4:39.6 ​​But the re...

5:28.0: So I want to talk about the big picture that I want to talk about industry and then I want to talk about you, how you're feeling. 7:47.2: From being a boutique owner to you being a human in the world, right? We are managing a lot.  10:54.0: If you can get yourself to 12 to 15K, you're good. You're in good shape. You know, like you're good. You're rocking and rolling.  12:16.1: It...

2:03.7 : What you're about to listen to is a group coaching call. We include group coaching calls with all of our programs. So, we have three levels of programs. This particular call is for our Boutique Basics Bootcamp course.  7:07.0: If you think you can sell everything to everyone and have something for everyone. I've been preaching this for years.  And you're going to see it come tru...

2:16.5: There's no one path to success. 3:13.3: There's been some quick fixes or people who've started businesses really quickly and maybe seen some success. But this is where the short and longterm thinking in my mind happens because you have to be on the pulse and you also have to be thinking longterm. 4:37.4: Size inclusivity has been something that we have been fighting for from vendors, from...