793 Catherine Cassidy:

Catherine Cassidy:

we survived a pandemic where women stopped buying clothes. We’re a business that helps women get dressed for work, and they stopped (fade music softly) doing that. I took that opportunity to say, “Okay, how can we show up and serve her?” And I put together a four week, Reinvent and Rebuild, program, which was basically taking an online program I had done in my first business, and refreshing it for where women were in this moment, working from home.and that’s when it shifted to become a membership rather than just, “Yes, you can ad hoc request a Boutique Box.” And just again, all those little precision pivots, taking the things that didn’t work or hard things and just being like, “How do I just keep moving the ball forward?”

The precision pivot. Every entrepreneur comes to learn that progress is all about pivots, large and small. The art is as much knowing when to let go of something that is not working as it is being able to fail fearlessly and forgivingly and keep iterating until you get it right, as Catherine Cassidy shares today about her journey building Boutique Box.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Podopolo, the interactive app revolutionizing podcast discovery and discussion and making podcasting profitable for creators. I’d like to invite you to take a minute, download Podopolo from either app store, listen to the rest of this episode there, and join the conversation with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice … Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who forged her experience in the fashion industry with her expertise in organizational design and behavioral psychology to set out to reinvent the way we choose and buy our clothes.

Catherine Cassidy is the CEO and Founder of Boutique Box, a unique “style as a service” platform that is all about helping busy women find the perfect clothes in an easy, time-saving way.

We’ve all been there. Regretting an impulse purchase, foraging through a crammed closet without finding anything to wear, or feeling like our clothes are wearing us rather than the other way around.

Keeping up with fashion is time consuming, and it’s easy to make fashion mistakes if you don’t really know what suits your body type or skin tone. We all waste time and money, so what if it were easier?

Catherine Cassidy founded Boutique Box to make it easier for everyone to find their perfect style. She’ll explain how she’s disrupting the fashion industry at the same time, and what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Catherine Cassidy and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Catherine, welcome to Wings.

Catherine Cassidy:

Thank you so much for having me, Melinda. I’m really grateful to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, yes. Tell me all about Boutique Box.

Catherine Cassidy:

Of course. Boutique Box is a style as a service platform where we are helping busy professional women curate their ideal wardrobe one piece at a time. We have you build out your intelligence style profile, including your style preferences, your fit, your measurements, and what you currently have in your closet so that we can then intelligently connect the dots between our designers who we collaborate with and you and your very specific needs. We do not buy inventory, but we collaborate with emerging designers who are creating quality product that fill gaps in the market where there’s a price value match. So one of the biggest things that I hear from women is they want quality clothes and it’s really hard to find them when they’re elevating in their career. And the brands that we work with are really speaking to this woman and her needs.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my goodness, where have you been all my life? So it sounds like it’s time saving. So for a very busy entrepreneur like me where I really don’t have time to go shopping and it’s just a pain and you don’t really know what fits if you’re buying online, that kind of stuff. So take me through the process of all the different things it does say for a very busy entrepreneurial woman.

Catherine Cassidy:

Absolutely. That is what has been driving me for the last 15 years is how do I make it easier for women to find clothes they love that fit because of the power of style, because of how you feel in something that is so true to you. And it takes a lot of time and energy to find those pieces. I was a corporate merchandiser who had access to inventory, pick it up at the end of the day in the warehouse below where I worked, but I still had to go into the store to try those pieces on to make sure that they fit. I knew what worked for my body, I knew what I liked, I knew what I should add to my wardrobe and it still took me a lot of time and effort. So what is it like for somebody who doesn’t have that experience? Or for women, you’re continually relearning how to dress your body as you evolve and as your style evolves, as your body evolves, as your career evolves.

So to answer your question, I share a little bit of that too just because I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as women to know exactly and that it should be easy. And the reality is there’s so much out there that it really just is not, it can be really overwhelming unless you enjoy it, unless it’s something that gives you energy, it’s really just going to take your time and energy. So we have a process that we’ve created that comes from the over 10 years I spent working with women leaders, getting into their closets, helping them curate what I call intelligent wardrobes so pieces that wardrobes that really mix and match and get you ready for any occasion that’s going to pop on your calendar so you never have this last minute need to add something because that’s where we create the overwhelm.

That’s where we create the clutter. You have something and it works for that event, you wear it, it’s fine, but you don’t end up wearing it again. I want to help women avoid that. So we curate essentially what we call your intelligence style profile, leveraging what we know we need to know about you. Some of it is a little bit of a process for women, but it’s also about helping you take one step at a time to really think about, “Okay, who am I and how do I want to show up? What is the presence? How do I want people to feel in my presence?” And that really helps to bring it in to embody as you go through the process.

Once we have your profile, we’ll send you what we call a calibration box, and that’s four to five pieces and it comes from Boutique Box, and we are doing this intentionally, we set up a fitting with you as well so that we can see it, so that we can get your feedback, so that we can walk you through the pieces. And we do this because of those 10 years of experience of helping women elevate and stretch to the next step, the next level of their visibility and impact. Growing into that, we send you pieces that stretch you, that speak to exactly what you want to create for your wardrobe, but we know based off of what you already have in your closet, you’re going to feel a little bit outside of your comfort zone initially, or it’s something you would’ve never picked for yourself. So we’re trying to eliminate any of that bias that you already have and walk you through that. So we don’t expect you to keep all four or five pieces, we want you to keep one, but it truly is that. It’s calibrating. It’s calibrating for us to get your feedback and it’s calibrating for you to be open to continuing to evolve with us.

And then thereafter, it’s not a subscription, it’s a membership, but we’ll send you a recommendation once a month. Typically, it’s just literally one piece. So you can say yes or no, eliminate the need to make a really big decision, because that’s one of the biggest challenges for busy women is we’ve already got enough decisions on our plate. And so you can say, “Yes, I want to try this. No, I don’t.” Give us feedback as to why not, if you don’t. And if you want to try it, we send it to you, we drop ship it directly from our designer partner and same sort of process. We want to see the fit, we want to get your feedback. We can do that asynchronously or we can do that with a quick virtual fitting, again, to get that feedback.

So we’re really continually calibrating and our intention and our goal is that you’re willing to try literally anything we’ll send to you because whether you keep it or not, there’s something that you get out of that experience. But we do want to minimize your need to have to do returns because returns are a pain in the butt. So it’s taken some time to create this experience because I really was like, “How do we actually solve the problem at the core? What do we need to know about her? What do we need to know about the product? How do we get her to keep taking just one step at a time with us?”

Melinda Wittstock:

A hundred percent. So there’s a whole bunch of things to unpack there. I think a goal for women, especially women entrepreneurs who have a tendency to think they have to do everything, and often have a hard time asking for help, just have a hard time receiving, I just think this one piece of removing the decision making every day about what to wear, just the inherent stress of that or just the time it takes. My dream is just literally everything… I know that every piece is going to work and I don’t have to think about it.

Catherine Cassidy:

That’s the goal.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I mean that’s huge because you think of how much time women spend on this relative to men as we’re growing our businesses. So just remove yet another thing and make it easier. So that’s really compelling. So there’s a whole bunch of things. There are women’s body shapes, colors that work with you, lifestyle, all these different things. And so how many of your clients come to you with a preconceived notion of what it is that suits them and versus being open-minded about it? I know personally, just in terms of getting a wardrobe together for a photo shoot a couple of years ago, I learned a whole bunch of things about my body type and the types of clothes that would fit me that I had lived for many years honestly, before really knowing that.

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah, I would say at least 80% of the women, if not higher, really have this, “I don’t even know where to start, so where do I go?” And that’s where people have come to us. Our growth has been super organic because I have not really focused on marketing because I knew we had to focus on the problem first. And so we came through referrals, my past network and that sort of a thing so we could take one or two people at a time through the process as we really refined it. And I would say the majority of them, when they heard about Boutique Box, they were like, “Oh my God, that’s what I’ve been looking for, but I didn’t even know. I didn’t know what I was looking for or that something like this could exist to solve my problem.” Because they go to an Nordstrom and the well-intentioned shopper or stylist is trying to help you find clothes that she thinks is cute, but she doesn’t necessarily know how to help someone find the pieces that are right for her body and that’s really common.

Or even there are a lot of stylists that are just putting their style on you rather than helping you bring your style forward and helping you see and feel and really embody your style. That’s one of the reasons why I call it intelligence style, is it becomes so embodied that it is effortless because you have those pieces, you know it and one, two, three, you’re out the door. And I share that extra bit because I think it really is common for women to again say, “I should know this. I should know what works for my body type.” But we’re so diverse. We’re so diverse in all the different ways of shape, size, coloring, and that what’s in department stores just doesn’t reflect that. And there are a lot of reasons why. So to go into a department store, again, I just don’t even know where to start.

So for the woman who’s attracted to Boutique Box, that’s why it probably is closer to the 100% mark, but we do have the 10 to 15% of women that are like, “Okay, I do know what I like and I just don’t have the time and I know that you are going to help me find pieces without me having to put in that effort.” But we have built out the process for women to really start to understand why we’re sending them the pieces so they can learn what is going to work for their body and just be like, “We’re all different.” And the key is, and the goal is, that you feel your best. Size is irrelevant. If something fits, you are going to feel good.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it gives you a real sense of confidence too, that clothes that are going to enhance you and your personality rather than the clothes taking over you. There’s a big difference between you wearing the clothes and the clothes wearing you.

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah. Also, I want to actually call out the fact that you did learn those, you were like, “Oh, that’s interesting,” and you learned those things in getting the support as you got ready for your photo shoot because that’s huge.

Melinda Wittstock:

So I had a really amazing stylist and I was going through this whole personal branding exercise, pre-Covid, and I remember going around Bloomingdale’s in New York and I would pick things off the rack and the stylist would just look at me and say, “No.”

Catherine Cassidy:

It sounds like we’d be friends. That’s very similar. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, it’s hilarious. And because I just really didn’t know, and then you see all these fashion trends, so you want to be on trend, but what if that trend really just doesn’t suit you? I remember all the time with all those low-waisted pants, say, and I’m a high waister, and which I didn’t know but it makes all the difference in the world for my body shape. But the only thing you could find, say, was that trend. How do you get around that?

Catherine Cassidy:

I know.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s hard [inaudible 00:12:18].

Catherine Cassidy:

I think that’s one of the biggest things that we’re aiming to help women overcome is to let go of that feeling of this is trendy, this is cool. Really helping them build their timeless wardrobe. It doesn’t need to be timeless, boring, classic. It can be just their wardrobe that will evolve with them. I think one of the great things about right now and everything in fashion is cyclical, everything comes back around. So right now we are seeing all sorts of different pants shapes in the market. We’ve had skinny jeans had its moment. Eventually, as it evolved, skinny jeans became more inclusive in fit and body type. And then we got the straight leg and then bell-bottoms. High-waisted had its moment and now low-waisted is back. And you’re really seeing all of that in the market. It can be overwhelming for somebody shopping on their own be like, “I don’t see that in the market.” But that’s also part of what we’re doing with the designers that we work with, is that we really are curating to make sure that we have brands that reflect who our members are and what their needs are, and also being able to eventually, down the line, influence and empower the brands that we work with to see the opportunities in different ways of being inclusive with the fit they create.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it seems like fashion is trending much more towards personalization, in that sense. You look through time and different female body shapes that are on trend. So curvy is good and then real thin is good, and then curvy is back, and then this and that and women suffer to try and fit into this mold, which is in many ways dictated by fashion and it can lead to the sense of shame if you don’t fit, just all the body image stuff. So it seems like it’s going in a better direction now where there’s room really for everybody. Just even walking down the street and seeing now just mannequins of different body shapes and styles, they’re not all the same anymore.

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah. And I think that’s the customers having demanded that, not to mention that there is so much more opportunity if you actually are inclusive. If you’re not inclusive, you’re only speaking to 10% of the market. If you are inclusive to the different needs of women of all ages too, that’s a huge thing, and different career needs, then you’re creating really big opportunities for yourself. So I think there are some brands that are coming to be much more aware of that. And certainly with plus size having some more moments, I say some more moments because I still think they’re so far to go truly with being size and shape inclusive, but we’re making progress and one of the-

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, clothes actually look good on a curvy body or depending on your height. There’s so many factors. So this is very, very complicated. So in a business sense, in terms of the inventory that you need and the types of customers you have, that level of personalization is tricky. How do you scale that?

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question. Our first step really was looking to what are the correct inputs and how are we capturing them? And then how do we start to systemically scale each piece of it? How much personalization do we need? Do we simply need it to feel truly personalized? So we worked really hard on the input part of the equation and to get the correct output being sending her clothes she loves that fit that she’s excited about, and then how are we capturing that? And we’ve solved that problem. So now then step-by-step problem to solve is how do we scale that in a way that does not sacrifice the quality of the experience for the customer or the designer?

So yeah, I think that’s where other companies who have tried this personalization approach, they scaled too fast, to be honest. That’s my biased opinion perhaps, but it’s a really hard problem to solve. I almost said, “Stitch Fix is solving the problem,” in 2018. Perfect. I just care that this problem is solved. And then I just had way too many conversations with people saying that it wasn’t, and now we’re seeing where they’re having challenges right now as a business with all the success that they have had. So I think it’s just a really hard problem to solve. I think technology can scale it. I think technology can enable it. I don’t think it can be just technology and somehow we have to figure out how to balance the human component with the technology component.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Well, you said it really at the start. Style as a service, so we all know what SaaS companies are, software as a service, there’s the technological component, but there is still always going to be a human or a service component. So getting that balance right. But it sounds like you evolved starting service, really getting to know and co-creating, in essence, with your customers before starting to put the automation or the different technologies or whatnot in place to augment what you’d proven. Is that right?

Catherine Cassidy:

Yes, absolutely. And I give credit to my co-founder and CTO, who is a technologist and really CIO with so many years of experience, and she makes me slow down a lot where the whole process that we’ve created, leveraging my intelligence, my experience is a credit to her really being like, “Okay, what’s the next thing to do that’s really going to be a powerful lever for us to get to that next stage and then that next thing?” So it’s similar to the process that I feel the style evolution is, is this business and technology evolution. Absolutely. And it is that, it does require that deep understanding. And on the designer side of it too, we’re doing the same thing and the same deep customer discovery with our designers, which is where I think we will end up having that, solving certain things on that side of the equation also will empower the technology and the scale.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it seems like a more sustainable way to go because you’re getting to know your customers and then your customers, you mentioned it’s a membership, so they feel involved in creating the solution with you. I think a lot of other businesses would approach it maybe if you approach it technology first, it’s like technology looking for a problem rather than having a problem and then leveraging technology to fix it. It’s very, very different. And you see both approaches in the market. So you’re saying this goes a little slower, but ultimately more sustainable way to grow a business.

Catherine Cassidy:

I think so. I mean TBD. It’s all an experiment.

Melinda Wittstock:

What are some of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned along the way? What have been some of the big challenges in this and how have you overcome those?

Catherine Cassidy:

Oh my goodness. One of the books that changed my… I was actually still in corporate fashion when I read it. Good to Great. And then of course-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, yeah, it’s a great book.

Catherine Cassidy:

… Built to Last. And that not necessarily Shrink to Grow, I do think the fashion industry is going to need to do that, and that’s a very hard thing to do. But in the Built to Last component is to not go so fast. So I think in the society that we live in, on the outside, it can look like we’re not succeeding because the business isn’t this really big business already, we haven’t raised a lot of money. But I think really focusing in on, okay, what are the things that have worked that we have learned? And I do think a lot about… This is something that came through my first business and the transition from the personal styling to Boutique Box being my business, is it was really not an effortless transition. It was a really hard transition and a lot of things didn’t work. And I also was like, “Okay, well, what’s the learn in this?” Because you win some or you learn some.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, the failing there is, I think, critical. It’s actually a good thing. I like to call it failing forward because you’re-

Catherine Cassidy:

A hundred percent.

Melinda Wittstock:

… like a scientist in a lab, just testing all your hypotheses until it works. And I think, oh gosh, so many entrepreneurs, men and women can be in such a rush and be really so focused on the metrics of what they think they should do as opposed to what is the best and most sustainable way to build a business. So we feel all those pressures for sure, especially if you’re the type of business that needs to raise a lot of money really quickly out of the gate because it can torque you into making decisions that are maybe not the best for long-term.

Catherine Cassidy:

Right, exactly. Yeah, and I really think that that… So that’s hard in the moment though because something-

Melinda Wittstock:

It is.

Catherine Cassidy:

… that you thought would work failed essentially. But every single thing that didn’t work, it’s like, “Okay, but why didn’t it work? What am I learning in this moment?” And all of those failures did lead to us figuring out what would work. And I call it precision pivoting.

Melinda Wittstock:

I like that. Precision pivoting. I’m going to use that. It’s good.

Catherine Cassidy:

It’s like, “Okay.” So again, and this is a credit to Maggie, it’s so hard to go slow. We don’t live in that kind of society. We don’t live in that kind of culture, certainly startup life. So that’s been a real big reprogramming for me mentally as well as just, again, looking at what have we accomplished and really focusing on that. So then it’s like, “Okay, well, then from 2020…” And we survived a pandemic where women stopped buying clothes. We’re a business that helps women get dressed for work, and they stopped doing that. I took that opportunity to say, “Okay, how can we show up and serve her?” And in that moment, I had some space where it was okay that we didn’t have the money coming in at the moment, we didn’t have revenue on a monthly basis the way that we had started to get to. And I was like, “I can’t push her to get Boutique Boxes. What will help her?” And I put together a four week, I called it Reinvent and Rebuild, program, which was basically taking an online program I had done in my first business, taking that content and putting it together into a slightly different way, refreshing it for where women were in this moment, working from home.

Not everybody… A lot of our clients are working moms. They’re certainly not going to have the time. They’re dealing with Zoom classes and stuff like that. But I knew that there were women that were like, “Well, let’s take this time as a reset for myself.” So we had a small cohort go through the program, and in going through that program, I was like, “Oh, this is what we’re missing. This is what we also need to be capturing.” Because I saw the things that were shifting. And so then we started doing small tweaks, and that’s when it shifted to become a membership rather than just, “Yes, you can ad hoc request a Boutique Box.” And just again, all those little precision pivots, taking the things that didn’t work or hard things that were happening because of society and just being like, “How do I just keep moving the ball forward?” So that can be hard. I also have to acknowledge that I have the privilege of a place to stay when I had no money coming in as a business. And that’s not something that everybody has. So that’s a privilege that I had to keep working on it.

Melinda Wittstock:

If you’re going slow and there’s this pressure to start turning revenue, but you’re not really ready to really drive significant revenue yet, There’s a sacrifice involved, I know. I’ve lived this one personally, basically accruing salary and my current startup now for three years. It gets painful because equity is not paying your bills. And so how do you walk that? Because you’re right, depending on how much money you’ve saved up or where you’re at in terms of your own personal tolerance for risk or what you need to live, as opposed to what you’re investing in your business, how do you walk that line?

Catherine Cassidy:

I think you have to look at your numbers every day, and I think you have to figure out a way to pay your bills one way or the other.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, somehow.

Catherine Cassidy:

For me, sometimes it was dog sitting, literally. I had a place to stay. I didn’t have rent. That was huge. I had a lot of debt that I had to pay off from the first business, that I paid off over four years since founding Boutique Box. I think you just have to really know your numbers and how much do I need to bring in? And one of the things that we, for a membership, that’s helped our operating margin but we only make a 30% commission on the sale, that’s our revenue driver. So we have to… I’m constantly looking at what’s the operating margin that we have to hit this month? How do we grow this 10%? How do we double it? Can we double it? And now going into 2023, we are starting to see a lot of the things that we’ve done pay off. But I think it’s like you’ve just got to get scrappy and figure out how you pay your bills. And if you have situations that I could leverage of where to stay for free, I’ll be blunt, living with my parents in your late thirties, let’s normalize that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, this is the thing about entrepreneurs when people think it’s so glamorous.

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

I laugh so hard, having gone through built five of these things myself and just the past couple of years building Podopolo, not easy. And people from the outside look in and just assume that, “Oh, you must have a lot of money,” or, “you must be fine.” But it’s really hard. So you have to be, in my mind anyway, there’s sort of a certain obsessive gene, you can’t not do it. And it’s not something that most people, non-entrepreneurs who are really building something of significance that’s different, that’s disrupting a market as opposed to being a business owner or having a side hustle or something like that. These more transformational businesses really require, I don’t know, something that most people don’t understand. That’s what I’ve arrived at. What do you think?

Catherine Cassidy:

I 100% agree, and that’s the advice that I give people, is don’t do something, don’t start a business until you can’t not do it, until it’s something that you can’t not do.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly.

Catherine Cassidy:

I tried to walk away and the universe and my brain was like, “No, you can solve this problem.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah.

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’ve had that exact same thing with Podopolo, which is such a big vision, transforming so many different aspects of podcasting and advertising and creator economy and all these different things, social media, it’s doing a lot of different things. And it’s like that in a sense where there are incremental steps, but it is, what I’d like to call, a flywheel business. This is a term that Jeff Bezos really started to talk about where each component part builds on the other. The issue with flywheels, however, is they take a while to get started, but once they’re really going, they’re really going because each revenue stream is building on the other. You do one thing with a technology that has multiplicity of outcomes and such. But it’s a slower business to really get off the ground. But the minute you hit that inflection point, it’s suddenly all of a sudden, and this is beginning to happen to us, is like, “Oh, you guys, where’d you guys come from?”

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah, and that’s so fun.

Melinda Wittstock:

Meanwhile, you’ve been toiling away for a long time to be-

Catherine Cassidy:

Toiling-

Melinda Wittstock:

… [inaudible 00:29:33] success.

Catherine Cassidy:

… feels like the right word. Yes. Because I just got a vision of, I don’t know, not Rapunzel, but you know what I mean. You’re just a little hermit toiling away, and then suddenly you get your makeover moment and it’s just like, “Oh.”

Melinda Wittstock:

And then here’s what happens though. It makes it look easy, the way it’s written about or the attention that you start to get, and it makes it look easy. And in a way that’s a disservice, I think, to people who are launching businesses without really that knowledge, first time founders. That’s actually one of the reasons I do this podcast, because, yes, you have to really know your space. You’ve got to be willing to fail. You’ve got to be willing to live at home in your thirties with your parents, whatever it takes. And if you’re in that, whatever it takes, I’m in. Then yeah, go. Do it.

Catherine Cassidy:

Completely, completely. Yeah. I was also in the fashion industry and people are like, “Oh, tell me more. It sounds so glamorous.” I’m like, “Well, I work above a warehouse. I drive by Farmer John every day so it smells lovely. My hours are crazy, and I’m not making investment banking kind of money for the hours that I’m working.” But I loved it. I learned so much. And it’s the same as an entrepreneur. So I feel exactly the same way as you about really think about it, here’s what it really is, and sharing those stories. I think it’s super important also for our family and friends to understand that too. Because I’ve definitely lost friendships over the years too for as I try to communicate what’s going on, people just see it differently because it’s just different. And that’s hard.

Melinda Wittstock:

It is hard, and especially for women, I think too, because I think we’re so relationship focused, and sometimes our friends, I just give them the benefit of the doubt, they’re coming from a place of concern for you. Do you know what I mean? But they can end up saying things that can disrupt your confidence or keep you playing small or that kind of thing. And you’ve got to be willing to surround yourself with people that genuinely really know what it is and know what it takes to succeed and have your back. And so there’s usually a bit of an, I’ll just call it, upgrade in friendships. There are people who peel away because they just don’t understand. You just have nothing in common with them. And that can be painful. It can be hard for a lot of women, especially, to grapple with.

Catherine Cassidy:

Definitely.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is the unseen part of entrepreneurship. So where is Boutique Box ultimately heading? You’re working out how all the scaling and all that piece is going to be, but where do you think you’re going to be in five years’ time?

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah. Well, my vision and goal is to transform the industry, to empower designers and create a hybrid model for emerging designers to have a path to scale their sales sustainably because I think that’s what’s in the best interest of the industry, the brand, each individual brand and the customer. So it’s hard to say because having been an entrepreneur for so long, I’ve also learned you have to be optimistic to be an entrepreneur. And I’ve learned to be a realistic, optimistic.

Melinda Wittstock:

I know what you mean, but just for people listening, how do you balance those things? Because I’m with you there. I’m a realistic optimist too. I’m always optimistic, but I’m also… Yeah, I don’t know.

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

But tell me how you walk through that process.

Catherine Cassidy:

Well, I think you get started because you’re deluded by optimistic.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, yes.

Catherine Cassidy:

And over time as you learn and grow and things take longer, but you realize that you are making progress and you need to make your financial projections and you need to make your monthly payments and all the things, that’s where you’re like, “Okay, I’ve been able to do this.” And then you start with having history too. So you get a baseline of what can really be done rather than as a business that you’re fundraising for, you need to have these you’re going to hit 2 million in ARR in year one or year two, which is wild. But the only way you can do something like that is if you get the funding to build it really fast. But the build fast and break things doesn’t necessarily actually work. So there’s that balance. As you learn, I think you get to this place of being able to balance the optimism with, “Okay, but here’s the stretch goal, here’s the super stretch goal, and here is the place that if we get here, that’s great too because that’s great progress.”

Melinda Wittstock:

It’ll be okay.

Catherine Cassidy:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. When I bury my head in our numbers, and thank you also for earlier saying, “Know your numbers.” It’s vital. For anyone who shies away from understanding. No, no, no, no. You’ve got to be on top of it. But when you look at a financial model and you’re really looking at the different scenarios, and I know I’m looking at it a couple of times a week because assumptions start to change. You learn things in the market, you’ve got to go and readjust. And then you’ve got to actually really understand what the levers are like, “Okay, so if this conversion rate goes down by, we think it’s going to be pretty steady here, but if it goes down or if it goes up, here’s what it could look like.” Or understand those KPIs and what are the real drivers in your business. So that keeps you grounded in the reality. But at the same time, the stretch goal is important because if you can see it, if you can conceive, it’s more likely that you can achieve it. So you’ve got to stretch at the same time.

Catherine Cassidy:

Exactly, yes. Yeah. So as far as vision, my vision is that we reach that department store level of scale where we’re really being able to transform women’s lives, women’s experience with shopping and clothes and style, accessing the power of that, as far as clothes being a tool to tap into who you are, your story and creating connection. And also, again, transforming the industry where it’s a healthier business model for brands.

Melinda Wittstock:

A hundred percent. So what’s the best way for women to sign up to Boutique Box and how can people most easily find you, Catherine?

Catherine Cassidy:

Absolutely. Our website is yourboutiquebox.com, Y-O-U-R. All of our handles on social media are also Your Boutique Box, and so that’s definitely the best way to connect. And absolutely reach out to me on LinkedIn. There are a lot of Catherine Cassidy’s out there, but if you should, search Catherine Cassidy Boutique Box, I should pop up pretty easily.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Catherine Cassidy:

Thank you so much for doing this, Melinda. I really appreciate you.