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, it's you and I, and I want to be as effective as possible because I know that every single one of you listening today, you are getting ready to plan out all of your new year and how to make 2026 your very best year yet.

And it's one of my favorite times of year to jump in and do this with you. It's something we do together in our best year yet challenge.

And it's definitely something we do together when we start off Reto Boot Camp. But today I wanted to give you a quick, short and sweet version. So if you are sitting in your office, you've got some free time. I want to get you a jump on what actually works when it comes to planning out your year, what questions to ask yourself, and how to be strategic so that you can make this year as effective as possible. So in order to get started, we're going to plan 2026 in 26 minutes, but I want to make sure if you have the boutique boss planner, you go ahead and grab that or whatever planner, notebook, fresh set of gel pens, whatever you need in order to make you feel like you don't write like a 12 year old boy like I do to be successful and we're going to get started, all right? Because this episode is going to be designed for you to pause, rewind, rethink, go back, and not just listen to actively while you're out for a walk or whatever you're doing. Like I want you to take notes while we are here together and actually reflect on some of the things that we're going to talk about. So again, not a to do list session.

We're going to plan from clarity, not just the chaos of what's happening in our head. We're going

to put our thoughts down on paper. And if we don't get specific and map out not just the things

we want to do, but also the time frame that we want to do them in, then we are letting,

you know, the wind plan our priorities,

not actually letting our calendar create the clarity and the focus and plan our priorities

for us. All right? So show me your calendar. Show me your priorities. That's the goal for today.

Okay, so here's the first reflection question I want you to start with. I want you to write this

down in your

notebook and just you can pause, think about it for a second. But the question is, by the end of

2026, I want my business to feel like this. Leave it blank. By the end of 2026, I want my business

to feel like blank. Go ahead, pause, reflect, think about that question,

and then come right back. All right. Did you think about it? You know what you're wanting

your business to feel like by the end of the year. So in order to go forward, I want you to work

backward and we're going to do a process of elimination of some things that worked and didn't. And so we can get clarity on where we're going to go forward, I want you to work backward and we're going to do a process of elimination of some

...