Ep 116: The 5 exact steps to get to $30k+/mo in sales

Hello, welcome to the Alie D show. Today is going to be so fun. And we're doing something actually really different than I normally do. In addition to recording the podcast, I'm also going live on Instagram as we speak. So if you're on Instagram and you're watching, hello, I'm gonna be recording my Alie D podcast. So not only will I be able to put this up on the podcast, of course, but also if you're on Instagram and you are just hanging around and you happen to see this live, you'll be able to watch me live here as well deliver the entire podcast, which I thought would be really fun. So if you see my eyes bouncing back and forth from up here to the Instagram feed, to down here to the podcast feed, this is what's going on. We're trying something new. Why not? I know there is a way that I could actually stream live via what's going on in the computer, but it was too much for me to figure out and I was ready to roll. So let's just go with it. Today's topic is going to be so juicy and so exciting. I'm gonna actually break down the exact five steps that I would be taking if I wanted to grow and scale my boutique or brand to 30k months. Because when you're first starting off, there's a lot of things that you have to figure out. But when you're ready to actually scale to 30k months, it's no longer about just flying off the seat of your pants or showing up on a whim or putting out dumpster fires every single day. It actually becomes a lot more strategical. So I'm gonna break down these five things that you need to be doing the five steps you need to be taking. Hello to everybody watching live by the way. And if you're listening on the podcast next time I record this, I'll have to send out an email so you guys can watch live as well. So guys, this is from me spending 13 years in the retail industry and millions of dollars in sales. There are certain things that I know at this point, not from theory, not from reading a textbook from actually living it in real life. What is going to take your business from doing, let's say 10k per sales a month, all the way up to 30k per sales in 2026. Per month, that is my goal for you for this podcast. Okay, so I'm gonna walk you through the five things, take notes, save the podcast, come back to it, listen to it if you need to. I'll probably be able to post this live stream on Instagram as well when we're done. So you can just pop on Instagram if you wanna see it and watch it live. Or recorded, live recording. Okay, so the first thing I need you to focus on when you're trying to grow your boutique or your brand to the 30k per month in sales area is you need to build more sales streams. Okay, if you are just relying on Instagram alone to push out all of your content and to get all your sales, you will not be able to scale to 30k months. Number one, what would you do if Instagram just shut your account down tomorrow? Would your business actually still survive? At 10k per month, you can kind of get away with just relying on like one platform or one sales stream. But when you're wanting to scale, we gotta make sure that we're bringing in money from a lot more areas and we're doing it on repeat. So that's the first thing you need to think about as a boutique owner or brand owner is, okay, how can I add some more sales streams to this business? And by the way, you will automate these sales streams. So I'm not adding more to your plate. These are specific sales streams that you're gonna be able to automate and show up and have done and working for you 24/7, driving in more traffic. So that's one of the main things you need to figure out is what is another sales stream I could add on here? A lot of you are just focusing on one platform. So a lot of you tell me that like you go, you're like all in on Instagram or maybe you're all in on TikTok or you're all in on Facebook, which is great in the beginning because I'd rather you be really, really good at one platform than like trying to divide yourself up into a million different things and figure out a million different things at once. I'd rather you really go hardcore onto one platform. But once you figure that out, you're probably doing like eight to 10K per month in sales from that platform. That's when you can start adding in another sales stream. So I wanna be very clear about that. You need to first dominate one platform, get super comfortable because what you're gonna do is you're gonna learn how to create content. You're gonna learn how to show up. You're gonna learn how to take people from being strangers on the internet to actually adding to cart and buying from you and all of these skills are extremely important to develop. But there comes a point where you're gonna feel like, "Ugh, I am getting burnt out and I don't know how to scale this thing." It's because it's time to add more sales streams, okay? So this comes from multiple different places. This could be again, having a solid content strategy amongst multiple platforms. This could be email marketing, okay? And we'll talk more specifically about that. This could be your website traffic. This could be in-person retail experiences. There's so many other ways selling live, going on different apps, what not, all the things. There's so many ways that you could build in more revenue streams and you will need to do that if you wanna scale to the 30K per month in sales, okay? This is a non-negotiable. You gotta do this, you gotta figure it out. And I know you'll be able to figure it out because you're super smart. You're a high-achieving woman. You always figure it out, but sometimes we do get stuck and we just need someone to tell us what is the next step, what is the roadmap. And that's what we're gonna do. In this entire podcast, we're gonna build it all out for you so you have no guesswork. Okay, so are we clear on the first one? You need to build more sales streams. You gotta figure out what is another way that I could bring in regular, repeatable revenue to my business. It's not just, let me show up and look cute on Instagram every single day. Not only will that, will you hit a ceiling with that, but it's also gonna get you to feel very burnt out 'cause you are doing the same thing over and over and over. And you're trying to get bigger results, but it's not always about doing more. It's about being more strategic. And again, I'll talk more about that this podcast episode. The next thing I wanna focus on, number two, is you need to create an email strategy, my friend. So many of you ignore emails and ignore email marketing and you think maybe it's outdated or I don't wanna learn the tech or it's too complicated or I don't understand automations. All these things go through your head. No one's gonna open my emails, emails are dead. No one cares about all that is total BS and total stories that you have either heard some random person say on the internet or you're telling yourself because you don't wanna do it. But if we wanna get to 30 K months, we gotta do things that we don't wanna do. And sometimes that's gonna be creating an email strategy. And the reason why I love email is because email is basically a way that you can create your own ATM machine. Okay, when you have a solid email strategy working for you in the background, you will always be generating sales from your emails 24/7. This is through your automations. This is through your welcome series. This could be through just your weekly emails that you send out to try to get more transactions to happen on your website. Email marketing is a non-negotiable. And you guys always wanna fight me on this. And I always wanna talk to you about email marketing and you're just like, oh, I don't wanna do it. It sounds hard. I don't wanna, like, oh, and I know I get it. Email marketing is not glamorous. Okay, I get it. But the crazy thing about scaling is it's way less glamorous than you think. People think like scaling like, oh, I'm gonna be flying around in private jet soon. It's so glamorous. When actually it is just repeatable processes over and over and over, including the boring ones, including email marketing, which I love email marketing. Like I am the person that email marketing, like I actually just spent, this is so embarrassing. I just spent the entire weekend reworking my automations because that's how much I love them. Okay, so I went through my automations. I do this like every six months or so. I'll go through my automations and I'll rework them. My abandoned checkout, my abandoned cart, my abandoned browse. And I'll go through and I'll think, what could I do to make these better? 'Cause I'll have more data, right? And so I'll be able to look at that data and go, how can I make more transactions happen? More conversions happen from my automations. Are there things that I'm missing? Are there things that are outdated? Are there new tactics I can do? And guys, the cool thing is that I'm the one that will nerd out on this stuff and then just teach it to you. So you don't have to study all the email marketing stuff. I do that 'cause I love it. But then you just get to get the cliff notes like here on the podcast, right? So you cannot ignore email marketing anymore. And this is really gonna blow your mind. I'm gonna tell you a statistic about email marketing that if you are not convinced now from just me yelling at you on this podcast, trying to get you to do it, this statistic is going to freaking blow your mind. Guys, the ROI on email marketing, meaning the return on your investment for every dollar spent $36. Come back to you, okay? That's a 36 times ROI. With social media, it's like two or three dollars. So every dollar you spend, you get two dollars back, okay? Do you see the difference, the gap in that ROI and how insane it is and how much money you are leaving on the table and how you could probably just add an email marketing strategy immediately and really, really up your sales. I have so many women that come to me that have thousands of people on their email list and they have no email marketing strategy and I'm like, oh my God, hello, this is gonna be so easy for you to just increase your monthly sales by 10 grand by adding an email marketing plan. And it works and people are like, oh my God, I know no one wants to believe me, I'm telling you it works. This is why big box stores, any big box store you go to online or any major retailer. What are they trying to do from the get-go? Get your email address because they understand how freaking valuable it is. They get it and it's really hard for me to convince my boutique girlies and my brand owners that it is that valuable, even if you have like 100 people on your email list or 50 people or 10, I don't care, you need to have processes in place to make sure that sucker is working for you like an ATM machine because it will. Again, the ROI is insanely high compared to social media and everybody wants to talk about social media. Everybody wants to go viral. And I'm like, girls, we need to get on the train, the email marketing train 'cause this is how you're gonna get so much more bang for your buck, right? Imagine sending out emails every single week and then all of the sudden getting way more sales than having to like create more content, right? Like if someone tells us to create more content, I think our brains are gonna explode. So part of this is finding you ways to make money that is not involving social media. Okay, 'cause I know a lot of us get tapped out on that and a lot of us didn't start our businesses to become social media wizards. We didn't. We do it because we love our cute products. Like look at this cute shirt I have. This is one of my new, my new line, right? Like it's so cute. Like that's why I do this. I love making cute stuff. I love seeing women smile. I love making connections with my audience and I know you do too. But I'm telling you there's ways that you could increase and improve your sales and scale even more just by adding these strategies that don't necessarily involve you getting on Instagram 24/7. Okay, so if I haven't convinced you yet to do email marketing, I don't know if I ever can, but I'm gonna keep trying it. Okay, so email is a revenue machine. Consistent sends, strategic campaigns, strategic automations, and your mind will be blown. Okay, the next thing I wanna talk about is so we have number one, build more sales streams, right? Number two, we talked about creating an email strategy. Number three, we're gonna talk about getting clear on the data. Hello everybody, watchin live. Okay, so I'm doing something new if you're just joining live on Instagram. I'm actually live streaming the recording of my podcast. I thought why not? We're gonna do it. So that's what we're doing. So okay, the third point is you gotta get clear on the right data. Now I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about data. I know again, you're probably going alley. This is boring. I don't care if you think it's boring. If you want to do big things, you have to understand this. Okay, if you wanna do 30 K months, listen, you gotta understand some very specific numbers. And I've come up with a way to make this really easy on you because I know that analytics and numbers can get very overwhelming. And I am not in the business of making your life more overwhelming. I'm in the business of making it less overwhelming. So I'm gonna tell you the exact things you need to focus on to increase your revenue, to make more sales. Okay, I call it my PCCT method. Okay, we're gonna focus on our products. That's the P, customers, content and traffic. Okay, PCCT. These are the four things I need you to focus on. If you wanna actually grow and scale to 30 K months. Okay, you're 50 K months, 100 K months. It goes back to these things. And this is so, so key. So listen up here. I want you to identify the top 20% things that are working amongst these four things. Okay, what is the top 20% of your products? What is the top 20% of your customers? What is the top 20% in your content? And what is the top 20% things that are driving your website traffic? Doesn't that sound easy or intimidating? What do you guys think? I wanted to sound easy. So you need to look at your products and go, what are the products that are selling the most? That's all we're doing here. Okay, we're looking at our products, our content, our customers and our traffic. And we're figuring out what are the things that are doing the best in those four areas. Okay, the best in products, the best in customers, the best in content and the best in traffic. And then what that allows us to do is look at those four really important clear data points and then pay attention and focus on those. Look and observe and really go, okay, what is working in these four areas? And then you know what we do? We do more of what's working, right? It sounds simple, but so many people think they know the numbers in their business and they think they know what's selling good and they think they know their best customers or they know what's driving the most traffic, but they've never really looked. Once you look at the data and you write it down, you may be surprised because you may, this is something that surprised me a long time ago is a lot of our traffic to our website comes from Facebook. It's one of the biggest drivers of traffic for us. And so for me, I was like dang, like I didn't really realize that years ago. I thought it was me Instagram or TikTok. So we pop off all the time, but Facebook is one of our biggest drivers of traffic and you know why? It's because Facebook allows you to put links in the caption, baby. That's why I love Facebook. So we load up on our captions with links to our products and that's how we get a lot of people to go to our website to buy. If I didn't look at the data though, I would have assumed that a lot of our sales and our traffic was coming from something like Instagram or something like TikTok. But it's not, it's coming from frickin' Facebook, right? So you gotta know the top 20% in your PCCT. What are your best products? Sell more of that. I don't want you to get emotional about this. I don't want you to say, oh, well, I like this candle sent so much more and it's so great and I can't believe that. Like we take the emotion out of this. This is where we just look at strictly data. It doesn't matter what you like, it's matters what sells. Okay, I remember having this conversation with one of my clients and they were like, "Oof, I really want to sell more of this." And I'm like, you are trying so hard to move that inventory. But if you were just to look at what's actually moving and just get more of that, you will have way more sales. And so that's what we want to do. We want to make sure that we're looking at the products that are selling the most, we're removing the emotion and we're actually going a lot harder on the things that are selling. Again, what are your top 20% customers? What are your top 20% in your content? What is the content that's doing the best? Do more of that. Do not try to reinvent the wheel every single morning when you wake up, you can look back at your stats, look back at your data and go, oh my God, every time I post, like I'm thinking of one of my clients, every time I post, like what a 60 year old woman wears, you know, on the weekend. And that's like something that she posts. Every time she does those, they really pop off. So we just need to show up and post more of that and stop trying to reinvent the wheel and come up with like 8,000 different content ideas. Once you see what works, and if you've been doing this for like at least six months to a year, you will have this data, you just need to do more of that. And remove again the mind drama around what do I post? We just look at the numbers and move forward from there. Okay, so again, customers, content, product, traffic, do it for all of that. You guys picking up what I'm putting down, you feeling good? Hello, Instagram, live. Okay, now let's talk about the fourth thing. You guys, this is like such a juicy podcast. I hope you're getting all of the love from this podcast and you're like, yep, I know what I need to do. Okay, this next one, you need to add some in-person retail experiences. Not only have I predicted that in-person retail experiences is going to be one of the massive trends for 20, 26 in the retail industry, meaning getting people off their butts, off their couches, off their phones, and out doing something real in the world, that is going to be a big shift in 20, 26. You're gonna see a lot more people like the, you're already like in 2025, you probably already saw some of the major brands start doing this, right? They're already out there doing these fun pop-ups. They're traveling, they're showing up, they're selling product, they're meeting their customers in real life and you know why they're doing it. It's not because they wanna spend all this money like going out, it's because they understand that real-person connection trumps everything. And if you can meet your customers in real life, they will be life long customers, they will be so freaking loyal, it will blow your mind. So what I wanna encourage you to do is if you haven't done any in-person retail experiences and you haven't gotten out there and you haven't put yourself or your boutique or your brand into like a pop-up or maybe there's like a salon friend that you have and you're like, hey, can I come out on a Saturday and sell my stuff? Maybe there's some markets going on, some kind of fares. This is your opportunity to get in front of the right people. So make sure whatever the retail experience is that you have on your mind that you wanna create is in front of the right target audience, okay? So like if you are like a super sassy high-end boutique, if you may not wanna have your booth set up at a farmer's market, that might not be the right vibe. But you need to find the vibe where there's gonna be other customers there that are gonna be like, oh my gosh, this is my type of person. You get their email address. I just had a woman that's inside my mastermind do an event. She got 200 email addresses and just a couple of days. And I said, load those suckers up into your platform. Start sending them emails, send them an email saying, it was so great to meet you. Here's a coupon code. We've already met in person so they already know and trust your business. It will make you leaps and bounds ahead if you can add some in-person retail experiences. And I'm even recommending this for all of my clients. Like I want them to do like one per month, minimum one per quarter, okay? You know what else it does? It allows you to get out into the real world and hear feedback about your products and your branding and your marketing and you and everything that you're selling. Like it allows you to get so much valuable information when you get out of your house, get out of your pajamas and get out there in person and start meeting your customers. Again, you're gonna wanna collect their email addresses or maybe their phone numbers, but it's a really easy way if you'd have a big splash really quickly. Another thing that it does is it drives a lot of credibility for your brand. When you have content showing that like you're in person, you have this fun thing going on, people feel fomo, right? Like that's human nature. They think, oh my gosh, I'm so sad. I didn't get to participate in this. Like I wanna go to her next pop-up. Like I wanna be there. She has such cute stuff. Like I wanna go get my picture taken in front of her cute mural she set up or her cute selfie area, whatever it was. Like you guys gotta think about something fun and creative that your customers will like, that they will feel fomo if they are not there. Okay, don't just be a boring vanilla person and just be like, okay, well I've got some grid walls. It's all done. No, think of like a fun moment that they could take a picture in front of her. Like really like what would your ideal customer love to show up and see or do? Maybe it's like drink a little champagne while they're shopping your candles or while they're shopping your jewelry or whatever it is that you make or whatever it is that you sell. Maybe they want some cookies. I don't know cupcakes, whatever it is. You gotta think about it and figure it out for your customer. Have those things available. Have a fun in-person retail experience for them to come out to you and they are going to be so obsessed with you just after being at some kind of in-person event. It's really, really gonna elevate your brand. Thus bringing in more sales, baby. And at the end of the day, that's what we wanna do, right? And also of course it adds another sales stream, which is what I talked about in the beginning. An in-person retail experience. I have clients that do these. Like I have another client that just did one in December. She did $200,000 in sales in less than two weeks. Okay, that's like most people sales the entire year if they're lucky. She did that in two weeks. Imagine if you are missing out on that kind of sales stream because it feels uncomfortable or scary or you don't know if you can do it is your first one gonna suck? Probably who cares? Get out there and do it. Everyone has to try. Everyone has to have their first time where they kind of suck at something. They get better, they learn things. They forget their credit card, swiper. They have to manually enter it in. They forget to like collect business cards. They forget to get even like all these things will happen to you so normal. Do not even freak out or think about it for one second. It is so freaking normal. Okay, so if this is you and you're like, ooh, feels intimidating. Get over it, get out there and do it. That's what I'm gonna tell you. If you wanna scale, you gotta get uncomfortable. And this is, it can be uncomfortable but it will make you really, really loyal customer base and it will make you potentially a lot of money, like $200,000, no big deal, right? Okay, here's my last one. I want you to start delegating now. So this is number five. So if you are hovering around eight to 10 K per months in sales, if you're below this, you probably are going to still be the person doing everything, okay? Which is good. I want you to be that person 'cause I want you to learn everything about this business. You need to understand how to be the customer service, how to ship, how to sell, how to curate products, how to buy, how to show up at fairs and set up like you need to be doing all that work, okay? You've gotta learn all that stuff. But once you reach around eight to 10 K per month in sales, this is the time where your time as the business owner actually becomes a lot more valuable and you need to spend it on more money making activities. And this is when you start to bring in maybe a part time person, okay? They're gonna help you ship. Maybe they'll answer some emails for you. They're gonna organize your new inventory. They're gonna add it to Shopify. And all of that gets off your plate because that's not really making you money. Those are just tasks you have to get done in your business. And now you gotta elevate yourself above tasks, right? Like if you're wanting to do 30 K per month, you're not just an admin for your business anymore. You're the visionary, you're the trend setter, you're the person has to think about like, what do I need to be doing now to grow and scale my business, right? It's so exciting. I love this for you guys. But you can't get all caught up and be in the person who's answering the customer service email. Believe me, I did this. I was the bottleneck in my business for a long time. And as soon as I'd let a lot of things, of these things go, my business skyrocketed. Psh, through the roof. 'Cause I had other people that were really, really good at that. And I was allowed to focus on what I was good at, which is growing the business, making it grander, going global, thinking bigger. And I don't have the space or the mental capacity to do that if I'm busy shipping an order or printing labels or counting inventory, right? So if you're at that mark, you need to start thinking about delegating. Again, bring in a part-time person at first. That's what I did. I hired one part-time girl. I got my first little warehouse. It was like a closet basically at an eye doctor's office. Okay, I paid like $250 a month for it. I was freaking out because that sounded so expensive. Now, if you guys only knew my rent at Dallas Market Center for my showroom, it would blow your minds. Like, I'm pretty sure I could rent an entire building in downtown Dallas for what I pay for my one little showroom at Market. It's not little, it is big, but it is a lot of money. Okay, but I had to start somewhere, right? So we had to delegate. We had to get the part-time person to help us do all these activities. We get our office, like all these things happen in steps. Okay, no one just wakes up in the morning and goes, "I'm gonna be like super successful and I'm gonna go build a giant warehouse when you haven't even started getting sales yet." But people put themselves like in this mindset that they should be at a way bigger place than they are. But you just gotta do these things to learn how to get there. You're exactly where you're meant to be right now based on your skills, okay? You're making the amount of money you're supposed to be making. You're bringing in the amount of sales you're supposed to be bringing in because you haven't learned the exact strategies yet. But once you do, you start implementing these five things. Everything's gonna change for you. It's gonna be so amazing. So just to kind of wrap up that fifth one, the start delegating now, if you don't delegate what's gonna happen is you're gonna end up burnt out. And you're gonna actually reach a place where your sales plateau. So if this is you right now and you're listening to this and you're like, "Oh my God, I've been doing like 10 K per month in sales for a year, this is why." You haven't started to follow these five different things. And again, your sales will plateau or you know what else happens? That really sucks? Your sales start going down because you're not doing the right things to move your business forward. You've reached a ceiling. This will happen. And you can either blast through the ceiling by getting on the right path and knowing exactly what to do. Or you can keep your sales the same, your burnout or your sales will go down. Which one would you rather do? Right? This is the truth about scaling a boutique or a brand. You have to figure these things out, guys. You cannot keep showing up on a whim and thinking that one day things are just gonna blow up and explode. You have to steer the ship. You are the captain of this entire journey. It is your job to become the most knowledgeable, the sharpest, the most focused, the most disciplined you can possibly fricking be. This is on you. Which should sound exciting because so many people think that it's all these other things out there that are controlling the success of their business, right? Oh, like the algorithm hates me or I'm not this or I'm not that or I don't know the personality or blah, blah, blah, it's none of that. It's actually just real hardcore business strategy. And a lot of us start this thing and we don't freaking know what we're doing and that's great. That's how we start. And that's how you'll start implementing all these things. You're not gonna know what you're doing. When you're trying to start delegating, it's gonna feel like really messy. You're gonna go, "Oh, I just do this myself. I'd get it done faster." Believe me, we've all been there, okay? But there comes a point when you figure out how to delegate. You figure out what shows are the best for your in-person retail. You figure out what are the top 20%s in my products, my customers, my content, my traffic. You figure out your email marketing system. You figure out what do I need to do to have more sales streams, okay? Those are the five things that we talked about today. You will figure all those out, but you've gotta make the first steps in every single one. You've got to. It is going to be the most valuable thing you do for your business, okay? I love you guys. Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode. Hello, Instagram, again, by the way. And I will post this, of course, as a podcast, which you'll guys be able to listen to right away. I'll send it out in an email if you're on my email list. You'll get an email if you're not on my email list. Go to my Instagram profile right now and click on any of my free things I have going on. I'm doing my six secrets to six figures right now, which is a live Zoom call where I'm going through six secrets that will actually make your business six figures in 2026. You can sign up for that if you want. We have our second call tomorrow. And I'll be sending out the replay if you missed the first call. Just get in, you'll get on my email list and then you'll be able to access the podcast and all the other things, okay? I also have a free guide if you want to get to your first six figures that you can download as well. But I highly recommend getting in the six secrets to six figures 'cause it is Zoom calls like this. And I just feel like they're so interactive. You can ask me questions. We can talk about things. If you feel stuck, like that is the best part about this space is not only are you learning the strategy, but you're learning it from someone who's actually living it with you. You guys, I am in this every single day. I have a warehouse right now. We've got 10 employees over there. They're packing up a zillion orders. They're getting things going. I learn new things all the time that I can share with you. And that is why this is such a special place. That's why the trend setter community is unlike any other freaking community out there, right? 'Cause most people are teaching from theory. Most people have not done what we're doing. Like literally built multi-million dollar companies selling their products. Most people just read about stuff in textbooks or maybe they're like great at marketing and they do have great marketing tips. But when it comes to knowing what do we actually deal with as brand owners, as product-based business owners in the retail industry, it is nuanced and it is different. And that's why I'm just so happy to be here to share this all with you guys. It is truly the joy of my life. And I can't wait to talk to you soon. All righty, bye.