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.

Okay, let's talk about something really important, And that's how do you start your day?

Are you starting your day on offense or are you starting your day playing defense?

So I don't know about you, but if I leave my phone right next to my bed, it's so easy the first thing I do in the morning to just pick that little sucker up and start

scrolling and seeing what does everyone else think about the day and what has everyone else been up

to and who's posted what and what emails have come in and what fires do I need to put out.

And without even thinking about it, pretty soon I've completely started my day on defense,

worrying about what everyone else is up to,

maybe the lack that I have between where I am and where I want to be, or I've started to compare

myself to other people on the internet, strangers or not, or I've become to get worried and have

anxiety about the things that I know might pop out through, pop up. What accent was that? The things that

might pop up during my day. So that phone time, that few minutes or seconds that I spend scrolling

first thing in the morning automatically can put me in a bad mood or in a dark place without me

really thinking about it. And when I think about, you know, this process that sometimes happens to me

or when I find myself in those moments, I know that I can go all the way back to being in high school

and even without a phone. So I don't have a phone yet in high school. Sometimes even having this same

negative reaction in the morning of waking up and starting to worry about my day and all the

things that could go wrong, putting myself in defense before I actually started to play

...