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Speaking of Curves: Meet Boutique Owner and Influencer, Chalyne Steer
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Oct 31, 2024
We're back with another Speaking of Curves series where we spotlight, celebrate, and support entrepreneurs and businesses in the Plus community! Join us every Thursday at 12pm, EST we will interview different businesses, designers, indies, and influencers in the community! Today's guest is Boutique Owner and Influencer, Chalyne Steer.
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0:07
hello hello hello hello welcome back um i'm mariam the creator
0:13
of the perfect fashionista and we're back with another speaking of first live interview
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um we created this series um to really connect with small business owners influencers uh
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let's see like creatives to talk about like how they're transitioning through coven how they're dealing with romana
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but also for you to connect with them because they've all done some very interesting pivots we still want to make sure that like
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even through roma like these small businesses exist um and are thriving afterwards so we
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came up with this like live series so that you can get to know these business owners connect with them put a face
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to their business and brand and really talk about how we can support each other what they're going through and really
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just kind of spread the love as you tune in do me a favor
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let us know where you're tuning in from don't be shy you can ask all the questions today ask
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them all we'll see them we'll be able to say hey boo but as you're joining in let us know
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like what questions you have for our guests and let me tell you about miss shay now
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ms shea i found her on twitter she was like retweeted into my timeline and i was like oh this girl's
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cute and then i found out that she had a boutique and then we started following each other
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on instagram and um i call her shea because i don't want to mess up her name
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but she has shops shailene ester on instagram on shopshayleenesteron.com
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she is an emerging plus-size boutique owner that you need to know because she's cute and
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what i even appreciate is she models her own clothes and for a boutique owner i was really
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curious about like how you're navigating this like it's rona rona is like messing up with everyone's
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business so we're going to be talking with boutique owner shay and we're going to learn a little bit about her
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her journey and so as you guys are tuning in say hello don't be shy um and let's
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welcome miche hello girl hey girl how are you thank you so much for
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joining us oh thank you so much for having me i i want to take the moment to just
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thank you and give you your flowers honey because when you reached out to me i was like so
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grateful you loved on me you told me how proud you were of me like
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i'm like who's this lady a stranger like telling me she's proud of me and i was just like so
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you've allowed me to be vulnerable and quickly comfortable in the space and so
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i want to give you your flowers honey like i just love you and i thank you so much for this platform and i thank you so
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much for just being you and just just laughing on me girl
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oh thank you i mean you know sometimes like what i realize is like you know
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we're kind of figuring these things out we make mistakes we make mistakes we f up big and sometimes you know we
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have like if we're not giving ourselves enough grace we need to be reminded to give ourselves grace right
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and especially now like especially starting a business there's no road map there's no this is what you're supposed
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to do i mean there are some but there aren't too many places of like really trying to figure
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it out because everyone's got a little bit of a different way of doing business so thank you for the loves this
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like you've only been in business one year but you have been growing really fast you've been making
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waves and i wanted to like you know show i wanted you on so you could show people like how really taking
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a a leap of faith on yourself you know taking that that leap of faith and and how it can
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really transform yourself right yeah so if you guys are just joining in i am marie janae i am the creator of the
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kirby fashionista and we're here with ms shea of shailene ester am i saying it right
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it's shailene steer it's okay
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um and she has a plus size boutique um online and she's been killing the game so as you
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are if you're joining if you guys have questions like drop them in like we have zakita from philly we have um kenya irvin that
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said hello hey y'all like make sure guys if you have questions don't be shy so do me a favor say tell
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us how you got started with your boutique okay so
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um i got started um february of 2020 technically i got started in
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2019 i was um i booked a trip to l.a to go to beautycon for a friend's
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birthday and um i was like girl meet me in la we were there for like the weekend but she
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came like a day after me so as i was walking i was like well let me go check out the fashion district
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because i heard it was so bad yes yes so i was like down in santee
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alley i wasn't even on the wholesale side i was just like on the side where they're selling the fake makeup and the bags and all of those things and
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um some guys on the street just stopped me like in my tracks and they were like you're so beautiful
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um can you come and model for us and i was like wait what's happening so i was like okay fine so i followed
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these two guys into an alley into their own studio yeah i followed them yes
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keep going followed them into their studio where they had a bunch of clothes they
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were like uh vintage um like clothing store owners so they
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bought vintage stuff and resold it and they were like i need you in this dress this dress and so quickly i found
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myself modeling for them um and then i had a chance to go around
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the fashion district and i'm like okay like i don't have time to like really go through this and all of this because i
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came here for beautycon so i came back home after beautycon and i was like what am i doing here i live
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in florida south florida and i was like what am i doing here um i need to like go back so i booked a
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one-way trip back to la literally the same week um i didn't know how long i was gonna be there i brought enough clothes for
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probably a week um and a friend of mine was like you could stay with me girl and i was like okay cool um but i'm like a person that don't like
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to be in people's space for too long so when i realized that i'm i'm probably gonna be there longer i was like renting
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an airbnb hotel all of those things to really navigate my way through the city i ended up being in la for a month and
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two days just because i fell in love with going to the fashion district every day finding my vendors finding my
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manufacturers i always knew that i wanted to create something um very inclusive just because
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of how my weight always fluctuated um throughout my entire life i was in a fashion academy in high school
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and so i was already like wanting to create something i just didn't know where to start so me being in la and just having the
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fashion district at my fingertips and being able to just walk down the street and find beautiful clothes and really um
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connect with vendors and manufacturers and things like that was um super fascinating for me so i ended up staying until i went
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broke let me let me stop you there
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first of all i'm gonna need y'all if you guys i don't know if you guys caught her story and caught what she
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said but she literally like took a whole gamble on her on her curiosity on her new
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passion on something that really caught her attention so she literally threw herself in there she booked a one-way flight
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to l.a spent a month where she didn't know anybody she spent
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a month in two days going every day back and forth to the alley the alley the garment district
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they're all in the same space um two different sides of the street
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um i'm from l.a so that's like where our california so i could you know i've been down there it's like
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lovely to be down there okay it's like it's like
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so and if you're just tuning in we're here with miss misshay she is um the owner of
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shailene's fear um a plus-size boutique um that she's
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created and we're talking about her journey and i asked her how she got into it and ogre just like
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jumped into it so here we are a month and two days later keep going yes so i ended up
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being there um i mean it was it was rough it was really really rough i started to run out of my own money i
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had to phone my my parents i called my dad i'm like daddy i want to come home i'm homesick um and he he said to me
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you know i looked at your vision board the other day and i saw the hollywood sign and you're exactly where you need to be
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and you can't come home you know i don't want to cry but yeah so he he encouraged me to stay
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he sent me a picture of his debit card and then my mom sent me her credit cards in the mail
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to my friend's house that was there and they really were like you know use it to find a
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place to stay whatever you need food all of those things um i i even tried to navigate with finding
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jobs while i was there i got a job literally like the first week that i was there but then i quit the next day because i was like i didn't come here
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for this like i came here to follow my dreams i didn't come here to work for another company
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that's not what i want to do so i ended up like really like literally walking out the very next day i started
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um and what broke basically um i it clicked for me i didn't want to
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continue using my parents money because i'm just like you know i have to be responsible i'm an adult so i have to go
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back home even though you know i want to stay but it's time for me to go back home so i quickly kind of just threw all my stuff out
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there that i bought from the fashion district things that didn't even fit me because i got one of my friends to model
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it um and i just threw it out there um before i left before i came back home in september
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i didn't even see not one sale like because of how i just threw it out there and launched it
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yes i did professional pictures and i did the whole thing i rented a peer space all of those things but i did not um do
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a strategic launch and so i didn't see any money like there was nothing happening i ended up giving
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all my inventory away and i was like i'm not gonna do this but something clicked for me january of
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2020 i was like girls do you know what you went through for for your dream do you know you
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literally like cleared out your account for um for for your dream you said you
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didn't want to work for anybody else you said you're not going back to the whole nine to five like i always knew i needed to be my own boss
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and so i just had to really lay it out to myself that i'm gonna do this for me
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i'm gonna be consistent not constant i'm not gonna constantly do the same thing over and over i'm gonna
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be consistent with what i'm doing i'm gonna go for it and i'm just gonna take the rest and that's what i did and so february
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2nd i literally phoned a friend i'm like girl come meet me downtown west palm
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and let's take some pictures i have one dress in two colors for plus size girls and i'm gonna model
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it and you're gonna take my pictures and so we did that and that evening i went home i edited the pictures and we
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took them on my camera i edited them um fixed the lighting smoothed my skin out
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and then posted it on my website and i was like all right we're gonna get the ball rolling and my
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twitter followers they just were um very supportive i actually went viral for my style on twitter and
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i was sending all of these people to new york and company and all of these big established brands
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already because of they were asking me what i was wearing and i'm like shayleen you can literally
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put that money back in your own pocket because you have the resources the knowledge and you know where to get
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your stuff you know what to do you know so i that that's when it clicked it's like when i'm getting you know 10
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000 retweets and everybody's asking me where's my clothes from and it's like dang i'm putting money in the next
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person's pocket that's already established and i'm trying to get established what do i do now and that's when
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it was like light bulb girl get your [ __ ] together and let's do it and so that's what i did
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and we just took off running from there so that's why i count february 2nd as my one year anniversary
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because it really is it it's when i decided to fully go for it and fully commit
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and say i'm not going to look back so yeah well happy anniversary thank you
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i mean so there is a lot of audacity a lot of like you know leaps of face
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you know i often times we get emails from folks who are like how do i start a boutique how do i get started how do i get
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started how do i get started and and literally oftentimes that first
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step is just taking that leap like it's never going to be perfect when you launch launch the thing
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fix it along the way so for you like you started february first
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twenty seconds second oh february yes then then
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the rona hit oh yes like for someone who's doing you know
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just starting a business so you want you're high you're like yeah we're doing this and then
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how did you like how did that impact you so i'm i have to be honest
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rona actually it was the peak of my business oh so i was um
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literally i i i don't know why but i didn't panic when everyone did i did it i i was still like all right
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well let's go shoot like you know and i was outside twirling in dresses in
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um downtown miami in brickell city center on the sidewalk there was no people around it was just
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like me and my other model um and i was just like twirling around i still have the videos so funny
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and then when i was posting them on twitter everybody was like go inside like there's rona outside i'm like in my
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head i'm like screw these people like i'm gonna i know what the girls want i'm gonna give the girls what they want
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and that was just that so actually march um february i didn't goal set
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because i was just getting back into it and so march i set a goal for myself i set a goal for
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like two thousand dollars because that's what i made in february just not goal setting so and that was my first month in so for
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march i set a goal for 2k and i break down my goals by the day literally by the year by the quarter by
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the week by the day hold on slow down because like i don't know if y'all caught that gym
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for our business owners for our bloggers influencers creatives when it comes to the goals you
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can have that big goal but say that again shay what you did to help make your goal more attainable what
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did you do i break my goal down to the very day so whatever i want to make for the year
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if that's 100k i break that down into the quarter i break the quarter down into the months
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and i break the months down into the week and the week down into the day so like i literally well yeah like that
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doesn't matter like this same application because you've given some some information and this is something sometimes i talk about like to
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influencers like you know if you have a revenue goal or page view goal like you break things down so that way it
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becomes a little bit more table because having a crazy high goal your eyes are going gloss over you'll be
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but how do you do it when you break it down it feels a little bit more empowering it feels a little bit more exciting um
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and it feels attainable so continue sorry i had like that was a great oh no
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and it keeps you account it keeps you um it allows you to hold yourself accountable too
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so um so yeah so i do that i did that i break my i broke my goal down into the
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day because i'm like okay if i look at the time and it's five o'clock and my goal for today is a hundred dollars and i
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i've only made 20 or i haven't made it at all then it allows me to slide in the dms send the text like where y'all at i need
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to sell these dresses so um it definitely keeps me accountable so that's what i did for march i made my
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goal at 2k um right when rona hit in the middle of march when everybody had to be home for
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two weeks you know people thought they were like i'm gonna go back to work in 14 days whatever the case this is vacation so
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they were just shopping away okay and i ended the month of march with 11k
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i made my first five figure in literally a month time of yeah let's just break this down
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though because you know for the for the person who is um you know for the person who is
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starting out and they're like oh my god she did this like i want to replicate this like you also had something else so it wasn't
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just about the goal and it wasn't about understanding but like you mentioned that you give the girls what they want
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and so but what does that mean for the the curious boutique you know future
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boutique owner or online store owner what does that mean specifically
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that means you need to actually get to know your audience like that's literally what that means you need to actually get
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to know your audience you need to build relationships and stop trying to just sell like for me if i'm making an income
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while making an impact great that's what i want to do but i actually make it my duty to know my
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girls um and know what they want i ask questions i ask them what they want i do polls on
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twitter like hey babes what do you guys want this week do you want cute loungewear
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do you want dressy items are we going anywhere are we still in the house are we spending the night at our base house what are we doing what
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do we want so you have to give your audience what they want and yes you can stay true to you as a
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boutique owner especially if you're the face of your your brand um i still stay true to myself
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but i still tap into my audience and what they want as well so that's what that means
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exactly you're dating them
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so don't just be buying things that you think like oh i want this like you have to
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know who your audience is who your customer is where she's going how she's shopping
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where she's shopping that goes to my next point is for
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boutique owners my advice or future boutique owners um my advice is to
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find the girl right find the girl and build your brand off of that girl that
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girl could be you that girl could be your mom that girl could be somebody that you're inspired
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by on instagram the girl is me like i'm versatile i'm sexy i'm classy i'm
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elegant i'm edgy i'm i'm all of those things and you know you have to look at where your goal
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shops who's your girl's friends um what does she do on the weekends is she a wine tasting girl like is she
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bougie is she outgoing is she all of the things and that's
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what that's how you build your brand i built my brand off of myself um but again you find that
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girl and you build the brand off of that girl but you want to stay like someone just in the comments stay true to
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yourself yes you can stay true to yourself and still give the girls what they want so yeah and that's so key and not
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and and it's okay because there's so many people who are like well i don't know and i don't know like you do you got but
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you but you did the work you put in that work so it's not just gonna be
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like oh you open your doors and like they all come running like you know we started on february 2nd
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i got it right this time um you were still playing around you were still like you still had your
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twitter you still had you're still showing your own individual style you were still telling your story
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you were still interacting with folks and then you started bringing people along on your journey
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and you you're very interactive too like you are very active on twitter like that's where like we
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chat like people be sleeping on twitter tell the folks about twitter
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listen i say you know what and i and i say you definitely have to
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utilize all platforms now because i ended up losing my my previous twitter
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account but i i want to say um twitter i was solely so focused on twitter because
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it allowed the app the my girls access to me in the way that i wanted it to i wanted you to be able to just dm me
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real quick and i can just write you back real quick versus you sending an email and like i probably won't see it until later on
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in the evening when i'm done working my phone is always in my hand so why can i not respond
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a lot of boutique owners think like you know okay email me email me that's fine but if
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your phone is in your hand and your customer just asked you a question why can't you simply just answer the question why
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can't you simply just send them the link that they're wanting um a lot of my girls
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they trust my um they trust my judgment because they can dm me and say hey sis what size do you think i should get in
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this dress and i'll say oh girl you got a 2x in that last time but this one has so much more stretch
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you can definitely get away with a 1x and they trust me to order that 1x and then when they get it they're like girl
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you were right it fits perfectly you know and vice versa to that point
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um mrs zakir had asked like a nice like party question and she was like you know
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i love how some of the online shops that showcase plus models put the size that the model is wearing
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even put their height but i really need them to start putting the model's measurements
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um that would be more of a help for me to make a choice to buy or not to buy i'm more of a rectangle
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ross you know she gives her her measurements so we're starting to see so on your site
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like you said you put down the size um what about measurement piece so i
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when i first started i was putting um all my measurements i put like my waist um
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my bust area i put my hips i put all of that um lately i haven't been able to put
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that but i've been like okay i'm going to take a moment to go back and just copy and paste things um and
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re-measure myself and update because you know rona we gain away so um i definitely need to re-measure um
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myself as well but i definitely have thought about going back and putting those things back in there because it did
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um it did really well in the beginning with um a lot of girls felt like that was super
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helpful a lot of my girls they based their size around me as well because i am the the model
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um of the and i do want to incorporate other models moving forward but as of right now um a lot of them that are 1x girls
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they base their size off of me so if i'm wearing a large they know that they can wear a large too so i always put my size
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in the description for sure so now we we've launched
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we've started kicking ass and our on and our goals like for the business owner like because
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for you like you know because you knew you were giving the girls what they want you engage with them you're
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responsive and reactive it allowed for you to be able to turn over product
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quickly right we're able to keep the buy and replenish on and turn over your
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product really well for so not only do we have like
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taking the leap and just doing it scared doing it without having all the pieces you have like you know the setting the
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goals having a plan giving the girls what they want listening to everything
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um that they're saying what would be that next piece of information that you feel has
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like really helped you um navigate and kind of like continue to grow
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um i say um definitely it's the really the building the
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relationship aspect that i touched on um a lot of them have my personal phone
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numbers you know you you can take your access to as far as you want it to be as a business owner
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i i like i really genuinely love my girls um that support me because the
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growth wouldn't be there without them and and so i take it to that next level of if you need my number because you
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want to order once a week or you have questions all of those things i have girls that have
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to date has spent over 10k with my store because they ordered every single week um one girl
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that i've never even met and she's in miami and i'm like girl please let me take you out you know like i really genuinely
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love the support so um to touch on that i would say building that
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relationship aspect of it um and being consistent not constant i really live by that being
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consistent not constant and taking the risk if you only have a hundred dollars
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and that pack of that dress costs 98 dollars get the dress sis because you can double
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that like that's how i think scared money don't make no money if i don't hold on to this hundred
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dollars [Music] like what am i holding on to the hundred
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dollars for okay i can get gas i can eat cool if i have all of those things already if there's food in my
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fridge i have gas in my car to get to my next destination and i have a hundred dollars and i don't
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have any inventory and i'm and i see that whatever's on on the site is not making it sales
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i'm gonna use my hundred dollars to get something that i know is gonna sell and i'm a triple that i'm a quadruple
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that in in the same day and now you have more money to do more things so
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take that risk you know go for it do it scared if you're waiting to be ready sis you're never going to be ready never
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we have a question from miss kiana um she asked how did you know this was your purpose and your
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passion hey kiana girl um i knew that this was my
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passion um because i just i just knew i was a different kid my parents coming from
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that island background like i'm i was born and raised in jamaica they want you to do the doctor
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lawyer the teacher all of those corporate things and i tried those things i really really did i went to
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school for business i got my accounting degree my associates in accounting
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i wanted to go to law school so bad um and every every um like every path that i
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took in the corporate world always led me some way back to what i love which was fashion um like
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i touched on earlier i was in a fashion academy in high school so i was sewing in high school my
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parents had a sewing machine at home being from the islands like you know they we do everything so they my dad
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would like turn if i needed my my bell-bottom jeans turned into skinny jeans my dad would show me how to do
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that um yeah so like he would do that for me he would help me do it so i just always knew that this was like
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a creative is just something that i always wanted to be and my passion was always getting dressed i felt great
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getting dressed it just made me feel good it genuinely like when i'm down when i'm sad i'm like you know what let
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me beat my face and let me remember who i am let me put on my clothes and remember who i am and
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um that alone makes me feel great and i love making other women feel great like the the impact that i have on women
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is crazy to me like they come in and they're in my dms like sis you help me with my confidence so much
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and it makes me like literally warm inside because i'm like i've so loved that because i didn't have that
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when i needed to feel warm and better when i needed to you know feel confident i didn't have that i had to create that for myself so
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i love that i can do that for other people so i just i mean that is a hell of
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like you know first of all it's a blessing to be able to know your purpose right because some people are kind of
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figuring it out or they don't have the space to kind of like you know move into that or you know
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or there's all these different things that are kind of like obstacles you just know you just know when you're walking in it
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you just know there's been times like i had a breakdown when i lost my twitter account
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last year in november i had a breakdown because so many things were crashing on me at once in my personal life my
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business life and i was like you know what i'm shutting down my site and i shut down my site for like a day and a half and i had
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to and i didn't leave my bed for literally about five days i was so depressed and i was like girl
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you have to pull yourself out of this i was able to pull myself out to where i opened back up my site after like a day and a half like i said
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so i was like i have to talk myself through it i'm like you can't give up like you work so hard there's people counting on you like
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whether you know it or not even if you think you're so small you have this amount of followers or whatever let me tell you followers don't
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amount to like that doesn't mean anything that's just a number if you have influence in real life
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like people are counting on you and you need to like really dig deep into yourself and tell
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yourself you can do this look in the mirror remember who the the f you are i don't want to curse
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um remember who the f you are and understand that you are a powerful woman and walk in
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your power and that's just what i tell myself all the time so yeah nobody can't tell me [ __ ] about myself okay but
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that's real i mean because there are moments i think sometimes we don't know we don't always talk we don't always talk about like the ugly
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side of being an entrepreneur the the doubting the insecurity the
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nervousness like the anxiety like for me like you know i've shared many times like i was
30:36
dealing with depression and anxiety like together i had to go i had a whole breakdown about like five
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years ago had to go to a therapist had to really start unpacking things that i didn't
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even know that i was carrying really learning how to better manage
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like you know like whatever it is that i was dealing with and really learn how to like walk in my
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power learn how to link into um myself lean
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into my own courage leading in right yeah and even as you grow
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my auntie would say new levels new devils like that's what my auntie said listen right nt okay
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i'm working on a couple of
#Business Formation
#Fashion Designers & Collections
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#Women's Clothing