Ego will eat your baby

The thrill of owning a boutique and the attention that brings makes it easy to get caught up in ego and more syndromes. In a short time you are likely to find yourself the local celebrity with many doors knocking! You are thrust into the glam lane with buying trips and fashion shows. Friends and family now see you as an empowered and successful person that is living the American dream, business owner! At every corner there will be another chance to stroke your ego and relish in the limelight.

 At age 22 I built a chain of 7 shops with millions in annual sales and by failing to be humble and focused on values, fed it to my ego for lunch.

I based all my choices on how it would bring additional attention to me rather than on how it would help attain the ultimate vision for the business.  I set sail with no map or destination and wound up sinking the ship for lack of focus.

Can you imagine? Buying my way onto the news to show off my matching mommy daughter outfits I sunk over 20k into on a whim when my kid liked a print at the factory LOL…live and learn!

The interesting thing about the failure of my retail empire in retrospect is that the concept, products and execution sold, very well. The success was immediate and I honed the skills it took to grow to 7 shops and run them quite smoothly. Processes were in place, year over year growth was incredible and I was frankly a natural in staff management / training, merchandising and marketing. You can perfect processes and skill all you want and it is crucial to success.  It’s such a big piece of the pie to adhere to professional operations.

It is not the only piece though. Having clear goals and maintaining a laser focus on them in every area of the business creates the synergy that is the special success sauce! I was wildly successful due to an immense effort and focus on processes and staff training. As I faced the collapse of everything I had worked for there was a major theme that ran through the demise, feeding my ego. My Lack of adherence to the business plan and ultimately a complete disregard for putting the business first cost me everything.

A pricey fashion show that did not fit my target market whatsoever…ego said, “yum!”

Now it’s not that I meant to let things get out of focus or that they were all the time. As things grew so did my ego and indulgence of it. I began saying yes to opportunities that served my persona and ego rather than the bottom line of the business. My efforts and energy were suddenly being spent on t.v. segments, fashion weeks and industry cocktail mixers. I forgot that what made me successful was the way I worked in my humble beginnings schlepping boxes around and planning in-store events for customers.

I began to base purchasing on emotion and an overzealous trust in myself rather than using data analysis. In the first several years I worked tirelessly reviewing sales and understanding inventory turns and planning my purchasing carefully. In time its easy to start skipping steps and concluding…I’m a genius! I made it this far right?

It’s not that I was special all along. I was successful when I applied best practices and not when I based decisions on emotion and hope.

When I stepped into this truth an amazing thing happened for me. I regained confidence. I realized my skills, experience; processes have value to the world. My story of letting ego takeover and what it looks like to lose focus has lessons in it for everyone in the retail business. I made mistakes and it does not undermine my talents. My mission now is to provide incredible resources for retail success with an emphasis on vision and adherence to goals.

This is why I work with management one as an affiliate consultant. They provide the data analysis to allow retailers to plan their merchandising based on facts and forecasting. My retailer clients and I then work together with that data to implement positive changes and create systems to increase profits and quality of life surrounding their companies.