it's been one year since the opening of The Goodwolf which is a boutique in downtown las vegas
in a previous video we covered what it actually took to build this business in this video we're
going to be going into the details as to how they have risen despite global mandated shutdowns this
business continues to do amazingly well growing month over month so in this video we hope that
the lessons that they share will help you build your business from the ground up so if you're a
new visitor to this channel hit that subscribe button right down below let's get started
so we're on set sean tell me a little bit about the good wolf where did the name originate from
and what is your guys's mission with this company the goodwolf actually it originated
from an old native american tale and it tells the story of a of a grandfather and his grandson
and the grandfather sharing a story of a battle within each and every human being that consists
of two wolves one being evil and one being good the grandson asks the grandfather which wolf wins
and the grandfather replies with the one you feed and the one you feed is your choice by feeding all
the positive emotions that that we can all control so and then the the bad wolf is obviously paying
more attention to the negative right right is just kind of you know is succumbing to all the
negativity that might present itself in your world but sometimes you just have to block it out and
and or even acknowledge it but still you know turning those things into a positive story what
would you say is your goal for every customer that comes in here i've seen that you guys are
really good at building relationships so how do you go about building genuine relationships with
people that walk into your doors so i would say our goal for every person that steps in
would be just to remember us i mean we just want to make it memorable you know they don't
always have of course not every guest is going to buy something and that's not the
that's not really our objective with with everyone who walks in the door we just want to make sure
that they had a good experience and they see some cool products but they also understand that hey
if they were on a mission for something we're gonna make sure they they can execute that
mission whether it's referring to you know one of the businesses that have just opened on the street
you know and and that happens by us asking questions genuine questions and and genuinely
you know uh being curious you know but uh you know of course everyone comes in they um they'll we'll
offer them a beverage you know and we'll give them direction into what uh into what product we
feel like what would make sense just just based on what they have on in the moment or just based on
what just hit our hit our sales floor so to expand on that a little bit has building relationships
and communicating with people always been your strong suit or was it something that you built
along the way through your work experience and through the relationships that you have built
if so what technical advice do you have for people that may be introverts that are looking for a way
to start building new relationships in their life i would say it's definitely something i
learned along the way my first retail job i was in high school and i had a phenomenal boss that
he just taught me all the simple things like when you see somebody in the morning you say
good morning now today in society you have your cell phone everywhere you go i would say put your
cell phone away so you can be intentional you can look people in the eyes it's the smallest things
that make the biggest impact so just by saying good morning how's your day going small things
like that start with that and then you'll find yourself being more curious like shawn shared you
know to be able to ask more genuine one questions to get to know people um but yeah i think just
being intentional with your time and you know if you're getting out of your car have your phone
in your purse or in your back pocket you know so that you can walk by somebody and say hello when
you're at a restaurant put your phone away so that way you can interact with the waiter or waitress
when it's your day off and you're going shopping in the grocery store have a list on your on a
piece of paper versus your phone so if you do get a text message you're not distracted
so little things like that i think will help you become a better communicator when i was younger i
wasn't the best at trying to start conversations or anything and i read it in a book it just said
start with smiling and saying hello like if you do that enough then you'll have the courage to start
interacting with people and i still remember the very first time it was like anxiety like yo i'm
about to go talk to a random stranger right um and i feel that today through social media and
people growing up on their phones they've they've kind of kept that anxiety bottled in like now they
can't go out and express it because they this is what they deal with right so for people that may
be dealing with anxiety or they may be introverts and now they also have anxiety on top of that
like what would you say is in addition to just staying off of their phone and saying hello to
somebody what are things that they could do maybe at home or in the workplace on a regular basis
that'll get them more comfortable with having conversations and building real relationships
if they are nervous to have a conversation or interact with someone treat everyone as if they
were your best friend you know because if you look at everyone as like they're a friend or somebody
that you already have a relationship with you're probably not going to be as anxious so i would
say but just keep it simple and then as you like you shared you smiled and said hello to everyone
get really good at that and then add maybe one little thing to that and then get really
good at that and add another thing and you'll find yourself being able to connect with people
on a genuine level just by doing simple things daily and then in regards to remembering names
right i mean working retail being a business owner a retail store owner
people customers will come through all the time so how is it that you remember people that you
meet their names how like is there advice you have to meeting the people that you uh to to being able
to remember the name of the people i remember one of my first favorite shopping experiences
and i'd been in the place one time and then i went back the second time
and that person remembered my name and i even asked them i was like i've only been here once
like how did you do that and she was like well i remember you were going on vacation and you were
getting these things for your vacation and so she actually taught me that like i just i was
just like oh my goodness how did you remember my name i haven't even been here in three months
and so i think when people come in you have to really be listening you know you have to listen
to them you have to learn about them you can't be thinking about your things or being distracted
um but remember something that they told you that you can either relate to
connect with or that you're excited for them and that always has helped me and i think that is part
of the experience if you come in the second time and i can say john how are you how's your little
girl how's your wife how's amanda and you're like i met this girl one time and she remembers
my family okay lisa what do you got in new york actually i'm looking for a birthday gift i'm
gonna call my whole family come down yeah so i think just making sure you're listening like
that could be the biggest and and learn something about that person so you can connect with them and
nowadays with people running online stores they have a storefront they might have an e-commerce
is there any advice or tips to being able to remember the customers that maybe reached out
to you on instagram or through uh buying online do you guys take notes on them and
leave little messages or how is it that you build relationships online i think we just try to learn
about them from their social media or what's what they're doing you know as many stories people
post or their feed um it's pretty easy on social media to be connected to people because that's
what everyone does to communicate nowadays so um i would say that would be the simpler of the two
but when they come in face to face to make sure like you're just really taking the same amount
of time and being curious about the person so that you can remember them of course you guys
opened last year right it's been one year in business and right after you guys opened the
whole shutdowns happened global mandated shutdowns right how did that affect your store and how were
you guys able to overcome those those barriers of of everybody being too scared to leave home
we wouldn't have opened the business if if we didn't know that we could make it through
something like this of course when we made the choice to to start this journey we never
saw this coming you know i don't think anyone could have ever predicted this but at the same
time we knew that we weren't going to stop and and we were going to do what it takes to
to really grind every single day just to make sure that the connections that we've developed
we we still get a chance to uh to use those connections invite them in a shop
you know but also it gave us an opportunity to um really you know one of like everybody else
in the world i would imagine everyone got a chance to stop maybe realign some of their priorities
you know take a take a a a breath of air but also um not get too comfortable in in that time
and also figure out what they could do to take the next step whether it's with their job or or
or just their personal life or if they own a business what what they can do to evolve and
adapt and and i feel like the ones who made that decision to to to evolve are the ones that are
going to continue and and they can be prepared for the next event that happens but what we got
an opportunity to do was develop some different habits between lisa and i and a lot of our product
is now online we also got an opportunity just to make sure that we're staying connected day
in and day out you know personally because i feel like a lot of our folks who shop us they like they
appreciate the attention and they appreciate the invitation so it just it just helped us
it solidified you know what the importance of our store is and and we we love the product obviously
and we love choosing you know amazing apparel and home decor and vintage product but really i think
people just want to feel connected to something and i think uh lisa and i really got a chance to
to live that you mentioned establishing new habits right so what has been the one thing that you guys
do on a consistent basis that you have seen has created like a compound effect for being able to
bring traffic and customers in like what is it what's what's one thing that you do on a
on a consistent basis that you would say has paid pretty good dividends in the long run just making
sure that every person that we that we meet and come in contact with in our personal lives
we get a chance to to invite them in the shop you know just by word of mouth you know they get a
personalized invitation from us if we get a chance to extend uh uh exchange contact information
but we are uh uh a representation of of of of the shop everywhere we go you know and so
we treat everybody as a potential guest or potential a potential shopper what that means
is just making sure we're feeding the good wolf inside and outside of these doors too so
if we meet somebody at a restaurant if we meet someone on this you know
while we're out uh riding bikes or something like that you know uh just to make sure hey they get
an invitation into our world and um because you never know this is something that you know a lot
of folks haven't heard about yet you know but it could be something that that a lot of people are
looking for since the last time we came you guys have a lot more items you have a lot more curated
selections you even have some thrifted goods here what are some things that you currently stock
that you're excited for and things that you're planning to bring in for the holidays and new year
i would say everything is hand-picked still and we want to make sure like we have relationships still
with the vendors that we're doing business with um as far as vintage products sean india and i go out
of state to shop for all the fun stuff so that's been a little bit tricky because there's right now
there's not a lot of markets due to what's going on so we're excited for that to get reopened so we
can do some more vintage shopping we figured out about three months into our journey that vintage
would be really popular because everyone in the arts district that's what they love
so we still want to stay true to our roots sean india and i love new fashion
the ever changing the evolution all of that but we also want to make sure like we have a little
bit of something for somebody that they're coming in from out of state and they want
to do a vintage piece so we have a very small section um going forward for holiday we have
a couple athletic lanes coming in we're doing a lounge line for girls um we're doing we're getting
in a couple new brands that they just launched in the last couple of years that will hit in november
next year you know like what can we expect in the year you know this is year one that you guys
are coming on you just by the time this video goes live the one year anniversary would have
just happened um what would you say would be an amazing transformation that may happen in year two
looking back that's a great question i think i learned this from our previous company
every day we stay focused on today and um yes we want big things for 2021 but we're
going to just keep fine-tuning what we're doing right now so still creating a great experience
being memorable working hard for the guests still meeting new people and continuing to
get better brands and i would say depth in inventory too
so but just staying focused on what we're doing right and getting better at that
it's always good to catch up with friends especially when they're willing to share
the advice and the tactical know-how that they've experienced while opening a business the reason we
started this channel was because there was a lot of barriers to beginning something on your own
and we hope that this video has helped shed some light into some of the questions that you may be
having about opening up your own store or even opening up your own online boutique
now to expand on a couple of the points that sean also mentioned i truly feel that they
had had their success that they've had because they've been able to understand a few things
which i'm about to share right now the first is knowing who your customers that you're going to
serve are going to be often times people start up a new store or an e-commerce brand with just
saying it's going to be for everybody that's not how you should approach it you should know
who your core target audience is going to be and then select niche products from brands that they
won't necessarily be able to find on amazon or big box retailers that leads us into the second
point which is going to be to create an experience a shopping experience that is unparalleled meaning
that you offer one-of-a-kind products that may not be able to be found anywhere online
or maybe out of reach for everyone to actually get to see what i mean by that is whether you're
offering artisanal products that are handcrafted and made and can only be shopped at your location
or whether you're offering goods that are luxury pieces that are costing upwards of
ten thousand dollars in order to really create that hype for the store and to want to drive
people to the store to check out those products that they could only see there and have a chance
to buy equally important is in collaborations knowing that you should be collaborating with
people in your community in order to not only raise awareness of what you're doing
but to truly and sincerely help the people that you're collaborating with whether it's through
photo shoots whether it's through live events or whether it's to collaborations on branded products
you should always be thinking about how you could collaborate with your community in order to raise
awareness of everyone in the community that not only helps you and them it helps everyone at large
get to better understand and connect with what it is that you're doing so i hope that you guys
appreciate this video and i hope that you've been able to take these lessons and that you apply them
to your brand as we mentioned before we started this channel with the goal to help you better
understand and navigate the industry which was turbulent has its ups and downs and it also has
a lot of people that aren't willing to open up and share exactly what they've been experiencing and
what's been working for them so if you enjoyed this video i highly encourage that you share
it with a friend and hit that subscribe button if you're a new viewer to this channel and more
importantly we always have resources and links in the description of each video which will continue
to help you build your brand and business from the ground up i'll see you guys on the next one