Business can be a lonely game, but it doesn't have to be.

Welcome to Boutique Chat, where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek.

We'll hear from product-based businesses of all types, retailers, e-commerce, and wholesale brands,

along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry.

I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the boutique hub.

And I can't wait to chat.

Hey, guys, welcome back to the podcast.

I have been excited about this episode, Alinda, for a long time.

I think you and I actually first talked about this probably like, what, a year ago?

I mean, it's been a long time because you have such a great story that I think so many people need to hear to share.

So we've got to dig into it. Thank you for being here. Let's get started.

First, tell me about just getting started as a boutique owner, how you came into the industry. Okay, well, thanks for having me, Ashley. I actually came into the industry, like, on a total fluke. I actually had a couple other businesses, and we had the opportunity to buy a rhinestone t-shirt business. Honestly, didn't want anything to do with that

business, but after looking at the numbers, Mark's like, well, you're not doing much of anything else. Why don't you try it? And so I did it. I bought it. And I was in it about six months. And I was like, yeah, this isn't for me. I don't want to put rhinestones on t-shirts. And so I just honestly fell into it. So I bought some packs of clothes and started a Facebook group

and next thing I knew I had two store fronts and we were going strong. Within like a year,

it was kind of crazy. Yeah, I mean, you did. I mean, you had a huge live sale business. You still

have a massive community of people. I mean, just tell me about the roller coaster of

building that business because it grew to be massive and you had lots of employees and management

and all of that. Tell me about its height. So honestly, what happened was we started with a really

small storefront that was only like 900 square feet and then real quick we realized

we needed something bigger and at that time my daughter was actually in the salon industry and she was

talking about opening our own salon so we found a space and I opened a 2,000 square foot storefront

she did a salon then she expanded again to another salon which which made it even bigger. And we did have two

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