Welcome and Introductions

Crystal Vilkaitis: Ronda, Ana, welcome to Rooted in Retail. Yes. Okay. Welcome back because Ana you’ve been here before, which we will link to that episode. If you want to learn more about what Ana’s doing in her store today, we are joined with Ronda for our special segment, retail therapy, where we give therapy to retailers, but disclaimer, Ronda’s not an actual certified therapist, but she is a business and life coach and has helped us out.

Thousands of business owners. So we’re really lucky to have her here with us today. And this part of the show here, this is where I get to be a little bit of a fly on the wall. You won’t hear from me too much. I’m just going to be a part of this therapy session. And we’re really excited to be in person because Ana is here and owns Pilar Boutique, which if you know me, you know that I love Pilar, wearing everything from Pilar and Ana, you are going to open up and share some stuff.

I want you to just kick things off here and share briefly your store. So we have a little bit of context about your store and you and then dive in with a challenge that you’re having or thought you’re having right now.

Ana’s Retail Journey

Ana McConnell: I started working for my mom at Cloz to Home when I was 16 years old, which blows my mind that it’s been that long. But I worked with her and became a co-owner within 12 years, so I still am co owner of that store. And then six years ago, I opened Pilar Boutique. in downtown Loveland, Colorado.

And then two years ago I opened our second Pilar location in Old Town Fort Collins. So we have three retail locations.

Crystal Vilkaitis: We’re doing retail therapy here. And as I was preparing for this, I was like, any chance that you have a problem you want to talk about live on air and you, yeah, you thankfully said yes. And so I know that there’s two things that are pretty top of mind.

So if you will just start with one of those, that’s big for you.

Facing the Fear of Failure

Ana McConnell: I’ve been in the industry for, I think it’s been 17 years now and you think I’d have everything figured out, but that’s what makes retail so fun is that it’s consistent learning. It’s consistent digging in, finding what works, finding what doesn’t and just improving what tools I’m using, what processes we’re doing.

But one of my biggest fears that I have is. Putting in all of this work of 17 years plus, like I plan on doing this into my 50s until I retire. And so one of my biggest fears is what if I don’t make it that long? What if the economy crashes? What if the stores start to decline so much that I can’t keep afloat?

What if the stores fail? So that is one of my biggest fears.

Ronda Renee: So this. This idea of failure, Crystal and I talked about that in a previous episode.

But when you have the thought of what if I fail, what is the pictures that come up for you? What are you envisioning when you see it as a failure?

Ana McConnell: Oh my gosh, I hope this doesn’t make me cry.

Ronda Renee: Disclaimer, it might.

Ana McConnell: This is like, visualizing this is like really sad. But I would picture having to sell everything at cost or if not lower, like having those giant orange signs that say store closing 75 percent off.

That is my worst nightmare to see that outside of my store or just having to close it and move everything out. Get rid of all the displays and having an empty shell of a store.

Ronda Renee: And what would it mean if that happened?

Ana McConnell: I feel if it wasn’t my choice for that to happen, if it wasn’t my choice to close the store because I was done and I wanted to do something new, if it happened out of something that was not in my control it would just feel like I failed.

Ronda Renee: So then it leads me to another question. What does it mean about you if you fail?

Ana McConnell: Even though I know that it would be out of my control, it would still, I would just think that I didn’t do enough.

Exploring Identity Beyond Business

Ana McConnell: And that I know that Pilar shouldn’t be my identity, but it is what I do for a living.

It’s what I Eat and breathe every day. It’s like it’s my passion. It’s been my it’s been over half of my life I’ve been investing into this business and so I just feel like I would have to find out who I was without pilar

Ronda Renee: Ooh Didn’t expect this to go there

Ana McConnell: You didn’t

Ronda Renee: I didn’t not so fast.

I thought we might circuitously get there. But think about that for a minute. Ask that yourself, that question. Who am I without Pilar?

Ana McConnell: I’d be the best dog mom, if anyone knows, I’m obsessed with my dog, Walter.

Ronda Renee: And we tend to identify with our roles, right? And we’re actually so much more than that.

Ana McConnell: Yeah.

Ronda Renee: Who you show up as, how you show up. I work with the question, who am I? And you can break it down to who am I, right? And that’s where we start usually the automatic, this is what I do. These are my roles, right? Whether it’s, I’m a daughter or a business owner or all of the different labels, right?

Then we can ask the question is, who am I? And that actually brings up a different set of answers for most people when you really dive into it. So when I ask it that way, emphasizing the am, what comes up for you?

Ana McConnell: I know that I’m strong and I know that I’m kind and I have a lot to offer the world.

Ronda Renee: Yeah.

So notice who is the labels? Am is the beingness. Yeah. And then who am I? Okay. What does that bring up?

Ana McConnell: I don’t know. Could you give me examples?

Ronda Renee: There is no right or wrong answer. No, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just about what it sparks for you.

Ana McConnell: Yeah.

Ronda Renee: I often ends up being a combination of the

Ana McConnell: It’s hard not to say, I am a wife, or I am a daughter, or, I am Ana, that’s my name.

But yeah, that’s a tough one.

Ronda Renee: You actually nailed it again, no right or wrong, but the wife, the daughter, all of those, that’s the who, those are the roles. The am is the beingness and the I is, I am Ana, right? I am this individuated soul that’s called Ana. So right there what’s shifted around when you think about a potential failure?

How do you feel differently about that possibility just as an imagination at this moment?

Ana McConnell: I know that I’d be okay. I know that because I am Ana that I will survive. I will move on to whatever’s next for my life and whatever journey comes next, but it still is a fear because at this moment, like I just have such big visions and big dreams for Pilar and for Cloz to Home still. So yeah, it’s a fear, but I also know that I’ll be okay if that were to happen.

Ronda Renee: Yeah. So having that though, now when we look at it, we’re looking at it from a different place, right? We’re looking at it from a place of empowerment instead of being at the effect of this possibility, right?

Ana McConnell: Yeah.

Navigating Economic Uncertainty

Ronda Renee: How many of us and how often have we been able to control the economy?

Ana McConnell: You can’t.

Ronda Renee: Never, right? And you have a long tenure, so you’ve experienced dips, right? You’re here.

Ana McConnell: Yes.

Ronda Renee: You, so you have evidence that you can roll with whatever’s happening outside. And one of our themes really in, in this conversation is about how circumstances and the external experience.

Isn’t the only thing that denotes your internal experience and the only thing we can ever control is our internal experience yeah, so and you said you’ve had failures before.

Ana McConnell: Yes. Yeah, they weren’t easy We navigated through them. We navigated through 2020 and then Cloz to Home was Open during 2008 2009 when the recession hit. During that time my mom actually took advantage of the really inexpensive rent and she moved her 400 square foot store Into a 2 000 square foot store And then my dad built homes during that time beautiful custom enormous homes and my mom staged them And so she had all the furniture from the staging.

So when she moved across the street, she put all that furniture in there and sold all the furniture. So that’s how they kept afloat during the recession.

Ronda Renee: So see how even downtimes offer opportunities, but we can’t see what they’re going to be until we get into that moment. And even when they’re supposed to downtimes, there’s always someone who’s thriving.

Ana McConnell: Yeah.

Ronda Renee: Just decide to be one of them.

Ana McConnell: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

Ronda Renee: There’s always someone who’s thriving. So we can, even though it’s becomes frequently a pervasive conversation in the world in these moments, how much do we feed into that? How much do we hook into that and let it be our reality? I’m not asking you to be in denial.

I’m just asking you to maintain the cleanliness of your own energetic space and not go into the downward spiral that says the sky is falling. Because there’s evidence every time we’ve had a major downturn, there’s plenty of people who excel. And part of that is, is the attitude if you will.

Ana McConnell: Our positive mindset.

Crystal Vilkaitis: I’ll add one thing.

Harnessing Creativity in Adversity

Crystal Vilkaitis: It makes me think about our session, Ronda, that we just did for me of allowing things to work out and you don’t know how good they could be. And things often happen. Like people go through things and they’re like, I never could have imagined this level of success.

And I think that I do this to the worry of what’s the future going to hold? And what if this all, what if they shut down social media, what if meta closed and tick tock was gone and it became illegal and our brains can go into this spiral of Oh no, I don’t want to lose it all.

Like I have something good right now and I don’t want to lose it. And what if I put so much into it? What if I lose it? And I think that we can create these scenarios in our head that we focus more of our time on than actually getting into our body and actually focusing on knowing that we can, we’re going to be fine no matter what, and allowing ourselves to still create and still move forward.

And then I would imagine that things would happen that we just can’t even imagine.

Ronda Renee: Exactly. And creativity shows up when we run out of the usual suspects, right? That’s when we get really creative and you already do really creative things in your business. What more? There’s just there’s so many things that as Crystal said you can’t imagine, but what happens is the future kind of hijacks us.

And it doesn’t tend to be the one where we succeeded.

Ana McConnell: I think a lot of us couldn’t expect what happened in 2020 to happen, but that was a time where I grew the most and I invested a lot more in myself and my confidence so that I could do live videos and I could do, I could, I swear, I could not do a try on video.

I was like, you could not pay me a million dollars to do a try on video on Instagram before 2020. And because we were forced to shut down and we were forced to sell through video and through photo that it got me outside of my comfort zone.

Ronda Renee: I wish it were a different way, but as humans, we never grow.

The way we do in adversity. There’s just no reason for us to grow. There’s got to be friction of some manner That causes that to be the case. And there’s a reason why they say necessity is the mother of invention. You did what you had to do because it was a necessity and sometimes, our feet have to be held to the fire even when it’s something that’s good for us because we’re moving outside of our own comfort zone. But when we’re looking at the future in the ways of the doom and gloom type thing, we’re literally feeding a future in which we’ve already failed.

So when you have those visions, let’s create another one that you can replace it with as quickly as possible.

Ana McConnell: I love that.

Ronda Renee: So what’s the vision you’d like to replace that with?

Building a Vision for Growth

Ana McConnell: Recently one of my visions is to have at least two people working at both locations at the same time for Pilar. I just think it would be so fun and having that means that I have had enough growth in order to pay that payroll.

And we’re growing so much that I need that much staff at one time to be doing stuff in the back, doing inventory putting new things out on the floor as we do all that now, but yeah, I just think it’d be cool to have more people working at one time and eventually even having three or four people on the floor at a time.

Ronda Renee: So I was going to say, it feels like two feels like an interim step.

Ana McConnell: That’s my next step.

Ronda Renee: It’s a great interim step, but in order to replace this. Vision a failure that sneaks in we want to have something juicier That really inspires you. So what’s that vision?

Ana McConnell: I envisioned myself having 40 or 50 locations and I wasn’t sure how I was gonna do that but that has been my vision for so long. But just this year in the beginning of the year I went to California with my mom and I went in this boutique and I was like I have a boutique crush.

I was just like, I loved the boutique. They had the most beautiful product mix and interior. And I was telling the sales associate that I loved their store. And she’s the owner’s upstairs. Let me go grab her. And I was like, what? Okay. I’d love to meet her. And so she came down and we got to chatting and I just asked her if she did consulting and she said, yeah, I do.

So I’ve been working with her for the last six months. She has two locations in California, and they are just thriving. She has a higher price point than I carry at Pilar, and one of my goals is to get the three stores that we have, so the two Pilar’s and Cloz to Home. To just grow more within the locations that we have vrs having more locations.

Ronda Renee: Great.

Ana McConnell: So whether that be increasing price point bringing in different lines growing more online and Yeah, just reaching out to our community that we have.

Ronda Renee: So going deeper instead of broader. So when you think of that vision in order for it to really anchor in you, get the sense of the feeling that will be living inside of you when this happens.

It might help to close your eyes to feel it. So you’ve got the three current locations and you’ve broadened, expanded the product mix or whatever the ways are that you’re inspired to make these changes. What’s the sense you get? What do you feel?

Ana McConnell: I feel a sense of fun. I don’t know why, but fun comes to me.

Where I just have the most amazing team. And we have multiple people at the store in a day. Where I get to work with other women. And I get to be their leader. I get to help them grow and just have this like passion for the store and help our customers feel their best selves.

Ronda Renee: And I can feel you feeling that. So I want you to remember this feeling when those other visions try to creep in and just come back inside, close your eyes if you need to. Feel yourself in your core. . And connect to that.

Ana McConnell: Oh, I love that. Yeah.

Ronda Renee: Because that’s why you’re doing it. The results are great.

But if you don’t take that feeling with you, then what’s the point of the results? .

Ana McConnell: Yeah. I love that.

Ronda Renee: So how do you feel about the possibility of failing now?

Ana McConnell: I think it’s always gonna be a little bit of a fear of mine, but my vision for Pilar and for Cloz to Home is so great that feeling of succeeding to that level and having that big of a team is just, it’s definitely way more rewarding feeling than failure.

Ronda Renee: And notice that it really is a thought that the failure part is a thought, the success parts of feeling.

Ana McConnell: Oh yeah. True.

Ronda Renee: So come out of your head and come into the feelings, anchor into that, and then you’re inspired to do whatever it is that there is to do.

Ana McConnell: Yeah. I love that. Thank you.

Ronda Renee: And again, just remember, there’s always someone thriving.

Just decide to be one of them.

Ana McConnell: Yeah. I love that.

Crystal Vilkaitis: And something you said, Ronda was, I don’t remember exactly how you said it, but if we’re thinking about the future and failing, then we’re feeding that dream. Obviously our brain takes over and we have these fears because we care. But it’s almost that awareness of Oh, I’m not feeding that dream. I’m feeding this feeling that I know and tapping back to that and really checking in with it. And I just feel like there’s opportunities to connect with that feeling daily, even if it was for a minute or two in the morning.

To remind ourselves, because I feel like our retailers are the busiest people I have met, like having a brick and mortar and you’re go, go, go, and you have your teams and you’re ordering and you’re shipping and you’re posting and live streaming and doing so much, so many things that it’s so easy to get swept up.

And lose that feeling and lose that where we’re going. And so it’s almost like a practice that you have to implement to really see that change and allow for the good to come in and choose that.

Ronda Renee: Yeah, absolutely. And I would encourage that connect with it every single day. Don’t just wait for the failure thoughts to come in, just crowd them out with all the good ones. So where in your day could you put in?

Ana McConnell: I have recently, I’ve been journaling at night and after Crystal’s conference, she went over a little bit of ChatGBT tips for us. So something that I ChatGPT’d was journal prompts. And some of the journal prompts that spit out and suggested was just writing down a positive affirmation for the day, your highlight of the day, and then also a vision of the day.

And so just writing down a vision of the day, whether that be for like myself or the store, that’s been really helpful.

Ronda Renee: I would say, and yourself in the store, right? Cause you’re, you are the container for the store. You’re holding the store and the store holds the customers and the product, but without you holding the store, yeah, like it doesn’t actually exist. At this point it’s an extension of you. So also being really clear on your own definition of success, right? Because we use the yardsticks of all the external results so frequently as our measurement of success. And therefore failure. If I get this, I’m a success. If I don’t, I’m a failure where there’s a lot more gray in there and it is definitely more about the experience.

So just finding a way to tap in. I would recommend in the morning because why wouldn’t you want to take that into your day? It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, right? What it was at 60 seconds, maybe.

Ana McConnell: To journal?

Ronda Renee: No, what I did with you with the vision, right? All I’m asking you to do is, in your day, in your preparation, maybe the last thing you do before you leave the house to go to the store, whatever that moment is that works in your morning routine, but just give yourself that moment…

Ana McConnell: to close my eyes?

Ronda Renee: To close your eyes and feel what success would feel like. Because it’s the feeling that draws things to you.

Crystal Vilkaitis: I have a feeling there’s somebody listening to this. Who’s like, Oh, eye roll affirmations, journals, spend a minute and think about it because I’ve been that person before. And especially when you’re dealing with something really heavy, really hard, and you’re in the negative.

You’ve been knocked down a couple of times. It’s hard. It almost feels like. no I’m not going to do affirmations. I’m not going to spend 60 seconds. That’s not going to work. I need something more complex. Something bigger has to happen in order for me to feel better or in order for this to work out for me.

through what I’ve learned and my therapist here, it doesn’t have to be a big complicated thing. Like it truly can be 60 seconds.

Ronda Renee: They are the most simple. It doesn’t mean they’re easy, but the things that are most effective actually are often the most simple, but again, we’re so trained. To look outside of ourselves.

We need to go do something, but really it’s even though we’re saying that we’re doing it and it’s not really doing anything, she’s actually non doing and that’s what allows her to drop in and tap into that and get that feeling. And it is probably a new concept for people, but our internal experience does eventually overflow into what happens outside.

And outside of us, we have zero control as to what happens outside. We have total control as to what happens inside. And if we feed that enough I call it internal sourcing. We do enough internal sourcing, then you get different evidence out in your life. And it’s not it’s not the law of attraction of you can have anything you want kind of thing.

I don’t actually believe that at all. I know you can have everything that’s meant for you, but in order to get it, you need to be fully connected to yourself in that feeling space, aligned with the truth of who you are and not trapped in the personality poles as I call them, right? And then the quality of the decisions you make changes. The ideas flow in a different way

Crystal Vilkaitis: Internal sourcing That’s so good. I love it now Ana. I know that you’re gonna be growing you’re gonna expand I just can’t wait to watch it and I’m gonna be like right there supporting you along the way for many reasons I almost feel a little emotional like I see it.

I see what’s happening and what’s coming for you. And we’ve discussed preparing for this because then you’re growing your team and that does mean more. Will you tap into that a little bit and share some of that with us too?

Ana McConnell: I think as I grow, that requires having more people to help. Having a bigger team. Having more personalities in the store and more people that I have to internally source, is that what you called it? Yeah. I love that.

I have to do that for myself so that I’m the best leader. But if I don’t do that or if I don’t do it frequently and have bad days or I get sick or I’m just like in a bad head space.

Am I going to be a good enough leader for a bigger team? Or if I grow too fast, am I going to be able to handle all of the staffing and hiring quickly? Or if I hire someone and maybe they aren’t the right fit and all of a sudden it’s I just have a fear of if someone were to just have a negative impact on my business and then I have to fix that.

So yeah, that’s one of my, one of my fears.

Ronda Renee: We have the same piece, right? That we just went through of, okay, we’ve got a clear vision on that. And then also let’s get a clear vision on what would the ideal type of team be? Because then as you are going through your hiring process. You’re more likely to recognize the people that would be the best fit, right?

And we’re all human. So my invitation to you is to not be so hard on yourself.

Yeah, you’re going to have bad days. Yeah. You’re not going to do it perfectly in every moment. None of us do. And what will you do when you, quote unquote screw up, right? It’s about how you make it right more than anything.

there’s another piece I sense, which interestingly enough. I feel like it’s connected to, I used to want 40 or 50 stores. And now what I really want is to really take these three and create something amazing with them.

The Importance of Intimacy in Business

Ronda Renee: I feel like there’s an intimacy that is a super high value for you.

I don’t know if it would be one of your, Energetic qualities of your soul, but it’s definitely a high value for you. Do you notice that? Like you really want to know people. You really want to know people. You want to know their name. You want to recognize them when they come in you want to know what was in their wardrobe so When we are looking at changing or growing we tend to look at more at what we’re risking than what we’re gonna gain. It’s great to just do a little check in inventory with yourself.

If I do this, what am I risking? If I do this, what might I gain? And that’s one of the ways, it’s not really a pro con list, it’s more of the, where’s the opening? Feel for the opening, that, oh, I want to go through that door. Cause you don’t want to lose the parts that you love the most, right? But what are the ways you can do that?

I actually really relate to that intimacy thing because all of my work with divine navigation, divine coordinates used to just be me one on one, right? For quite a few years. And I didn’t want to give up that part. And now I don’t work with everyone. And I’ll always keep people that I work with, right?

Like I’ll always do some level of that because it feeds me just as much as it feeds the client. So what are some ways that you can keep intimacy with your team and with your clientele as you grow? That would be a great question to ask. But now that we know that intimacy is a value and a principle that you want to carry forward, what does that look like?

Ana McConnell: Lots of really fun team get togethers.

Ronda Renee: Yeah, that’s what, that’s one of the ways, and I certainly don’t know all of the things that you do inside of your stores at the moment in your boutiques, but what are some other ways that you can make customers feel special that aren’t directly connected to you, but still feed that for you and for them?

Ana McConnell: That’s something that I’ve really worked on this year, actually. I’m really bad with timelines, but there was a period of time last year where I had a goal to delegate most things in the business and really be running the business and not in the business, if that makes sense?

Ronda Renee: Working on the business, not in the business.

Ana McConnell: Yeah, that’s the saying. Thank you. And so that was a goal of mine last year. And then my numbers were not where they needed to be successful. And that’s something that my business consultant, has really helped me with. She’s like, you need to be on the floor as much as you possibly can, like as much as you can handle it.

You need to be on the floor. You need to be working one on one with your customers because that’s how you grew the business in the beginning. And then also by doing that and having my team work with me and see how I sell, it teaches them how to sell like me. And. Last year I would train someone and then maybe for two weeks and I would just be like, okay, great.

Thanks for working on Sunday so I can have a day off. But I didn’t really train them and continue to invest in training them on how to sell more and upselling and your average order value and your turnover rate and all of those Analytics. I wasn’t teaching my team that. And so that’s something that I’ve really been focusing on this year.

And this year I have to say Pilar is up 15 percent year to date and the last three months, I think we’ve been up 20 percent or more. Yeah.

Ronda Renee: So that is such a great example. As the business owner, you have what’s called unconscious competences. There’s things that you were just naturally good at and you don’t know, you don’t realize that other people can’t do it the way that you do it.

And so we have to make our unconscious competences, conscious competences so we can convey them because they are what built the business and grew the business. The same things that grew a multiple, say half a dozen location, if you decide to grow to that space, they are different than 50 because right now you are the stores, right?

There’s a brandedness that’s connected to you and there’s a moment where you decide how much of this am I going to move off of me? Or is this really central to me? And that’s a very personal decision. There is no right and wrong. And I think that thing of delegate everything is one of the worst pieces of business advice.

Ana McConnell: Yeah, it wasn’t a good, it wasn’t a good choice.

Ronda Renee: Yeah. Because it puts way too much at risk and there’s a time to do those things, but there’s also things that literally. Potentially for quite some time, only you can do, and it’s not worth the risk of delegating it because of the impact that it’ll have on the business.

So while it is a seasoned piece of business advice, right? Is don’t work in the business, work on the business. You have to be really careful. We’re not talking about a widget here, right? We’re talking about personal relationships that happened to be through the clothing and the merchandise that you sell.

Because intimacy is actually your driver. So when you know that, then you also know how to make decisions and where from to make those decisions.

Ana McConnell: Yeah. And I think by me just not being in the business as much, I wasn’t around my team as much.

And so they weren’t seeing how I did do things and they weren’t making those relationships with the customers How I was doing it, but it’s been really cool this year that I’m in the business more and I’ve been really focusing on training my team to have those relationships and build those relationships with the customers, just like I do it.

And it’s been really cool to see my girls grow themselves individually, personally, and just grow their sales. That’s been really cool.

Ronda Renee: That helps everybody. And I know because you, you do live videos and things like that. Also consider shooting some of your training on video so that there’s a point where you don’t have to actually do it individually, but you have conveyed that and then there you go.

You can exit yourself from that piece and then you have your next person, your protege, if you will, that has taken it on so well, then they can train the other people.

Ana McConnell: Oh, that’s smart.

Crystal Vilkaitis: I’m loving this because I’m getting the therapy also.

I so agree the delegate everything is one of the worst things and I fell into that trap. For me, it was so hard because then I felt like I didn’t have a purpose and it took me away from the things I did enjoy doing.

So then I’m not happy. So what am I doing?

Ronda Renee: Why are you, then why are you bothering?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah. Like it’s just, it’s terrible. So I’m loving this conversation and I just have to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being open and for sharing what’s going on.

Final Thoughts and Ana’s Advice for Retailers

Ronda Renee: How are you feeling about the two fears now?

Ana McConnell: I feel great. I forget to visualize. So I’m so glad that you reminded me of that. I have been to therapy and that’s something that she taught me to do, but I forgot about it. That was probably 10 years ago that I learned to do that.

I remember during that therapy session, I closed my eyes and I said, I just envision a really small, black, fluffy dog sitting on my lap and cuddling with me. And I have one now, so yes, yeah, it does work. So definitely starting tomorrow, I think that’s going to be really helpful for me to do that in the morning.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Ronda, any final thoughts from you, my therapist?

Ronda Renee: Thanks. This is so fun to do. It’s the continuous theme that we’ve had so far really is like, there’s no right or wrong answer. There’s the most aligned answer for you and to keep coming back to what’s true for you internally, rather than using an external comparison to what success or failure is.

There are numbers, there are facts and figures. That is still what you’re going to work with. But overall All the journey on the way to those accomplishments is the most important part.

Crystal Vilkaitis: It’s so true.

So before we sign off here, there’s a idea that Dustin threw in and I think it’s great. So Ana, before we sign off, being a retailer, you know exactly who is listening to this episode.

You know exactly who they are and what therapeutic advice do you have for them?

Ana McConnell: I actually have a few Ronda just said something about comparison. Don’t compare yourself to the other boutiques out there and the other retailers.

Like there are so many retailers that have started and just had a different journey. And so just be on your own journey and within that be present with your journey because retail is fun.

It’s supposed to be fun. I know it’s stressful. I know we get burnt out, but it’s what we chose to do. And because we chose it let’s have fun with it. Let’s have fun with our team and have fun with buying and have fun with the Analytics and the numbers and all of it. And if there’s something that you’re not having fun with, maybe that’s where you delegate it.

But the things that you started the business for, make sure to keep doing those and just enjoy the process.

Crystal Vilkaitis: I love it. Yeah. How fun can it be? Make it fun. Have the fun. Such good advice, ladies. Thank you so much. This is so amazing. Everyone. Thank you for tuning into this special segment of retail therapy.

We want to know from you, are you finding this valuable? Give us your feedback. You can put it in the Facebook group. You can leave a review. We want to know what you think of these episodes and let us know if you think we should keep doing them. I think we should. All right, everyone. I am rooting for your success.

Have a great week ahead. Bye!

Thank you so much for being here. It means the world to me. Don’t forget to join the rise and shine newsletter, which is social media news. You need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystal media, co. com slash rise to join. And don’t miss the newest episode of Rooted in Retail, which drops every Sunday morning.

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