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Speaking Of Curves: Meet Boutique Owner, Brittany Washington
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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 Creative, Brittany Washington.
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hello hello hello hello happy thursday i am marie danae i'm the
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creator of the curvy fashionista um your plus size fashion resource destination
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and we're back with another speaking of cars now if you're kind of new here and you don't
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really know what we're talking about our speaking of curves is a series that happens every thursday at 12 p.m eastern
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standard time and we get to introduce have a conversation talk about
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um talk with plus size indie designers indie businesses retailers boutiques
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creators models influencers um within the plus space especially now like as
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you know with the rona has like impacted and affected businesses it has been important for me to be able
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to share with you the plus size business owners that you can support through the rona and beyond right so
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we've had some amazing guests last week we had john quail um plus size illustrator
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and today's guest is definitely gonna be a fun one um someone who i get to introduce to you
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but as you are tuning in do me a favor make sure you say hey girl hey
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let us know where you're tuning in from say hello if you have questions throughout today's live make
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sure you drop them here and we'll answer them so we already got shout out to jeanette hey girl
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thanks for showing some love but like make sure you say hello and drop some questions and and help and
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it's really about supporting these indie businesses and these indie designers
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and retailers so that we can support them because quite frankly like they are the how do you say like the
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backbone like the they kind of like push plus size fashion forward
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right and so with that being said like you know it's important that we out here to actually support them so
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whether or not like you may not like it the brand may or may not be for you but you can only share them with someone
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else right so our guest today is you know um a boutique owner she's a um
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she is she has a great community and i'm really excited because some of
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her pieces like when she's told me some of the stories behind them i want you to understand and get to know
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so we have miss britney of my beautiful fluff
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and she's going to be talking with us today about her journey how you can support and and get to know
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a little bit more about her business are you ready are you ready okay here we go and then and make sure you guys keep saying hey
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girl hey so hello miss oh wait let me see let's see there we go hello britney
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hello thank you so much for joining in how you doing today i'm good how are you doing
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i'm good i'm good i'm good got my coffee i'm good you know got my my hair you know having
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some fun with this new do it's now thank you now for those who
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don't know you can you introduce yourself and and tell us a little bit about your business and
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when you started my name is brittany washington i'm from the quad cities iowa i started my business about six
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years ago i went through a period where i was transitioning right after i had my son
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and my hair started falling out anyway so i'm like it's a perfect time to chop it off so i did a big chop
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and i wanted to find a natural hair t-shirt but they only went up to 3x so i couldn't get them so i was disappointed
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so i'm like you know what i'm going to create them myself right that turned into a whole journey and a
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whole process because finding the sizes that i wanted in the u.s was not as easy as i thought i'm like
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there's got to be somewhere that makes plus size t-shirts that i can just print my designs on them
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in above a 3x right at the time that was not the case so
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it ended up going to china to have my shirts manufactured i had the design i want
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i had the cuts that i wanted the sizes but i got my first box of t-shirts and i
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cried my eyes out because it was in centimeters instead of inches
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no so you had like a little baby shirt yeah i had the baby shirts they made
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beautiful dust racks but it was frustration the whole first year of business
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i don't even count my first year because it took me that first year to get the right shirt right oh my gosh si your shirts
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your fur shirts were in centimeters we're in centimeters oh the second box was even worse
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the second box i got that was supposed to be large through i wanted to start with a 4x which would have been a 26 28.
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wait three weeks three uh three to six weeks they're like okay your ships your shirts are on the way they get here
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it is a box of nothing but four x's in a putrid green color oh my gosh
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so third time i'm like you know what we're not gonna do this
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so the third time i'm like okay i'm gonna make sure that we're both on the same exact page before you start making
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these shirts my husband helped me do a chart to have centimeters to inches conversion
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that's covered i made sure i listed for them each size and it was supposed to be 20 20 larges
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21x 2x 3x4x i broke that down in a separate chart and then i made sure the shirt should be
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white with the curvaceous curls logo on it not green not blue but just white
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and eventually i got a box of shirts eventually eventually
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okay so this is i want to say so this is what like four or five years ago yeah and so oh my gosh talk about like
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rocky start and so you're like bring it on i'm ready for anything so now you've started you've got your
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shirts now how did my beautiful fluff come about like from there like how have you
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evolved and for those who don't know like what is my beautiful fluff
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well what it was is i originally just wanted to focus on hair but when i found that i couldn't find
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the size it kind of evoked some feelings i was frustrated i'm like why can't i get the size i want in this
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cute shirt that i want so i'm like it's more than just my hair i'm like i was sitting there and i'm
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like i don't like this name i want it to be something bigger and my mom from the time i was born i've
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been fluffy like i had the chunkiest cheeks so my mom called me fluffy forever
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and it kind of stuck so from there i'm like okay i was going through a period where i was
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learning to love myself i had just finished up a plus-sized photo shoot with my brother
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and i'm like you know what i'm beautiful as i am my fluff is
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beautiful all of it the fluffy hair and the fluffy belly i'm like it's beautiful so i named it my beautiful fluff and then
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in my logo the logo is actually me from the photograph they turned it into a silhouette so i'm
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part of my logo oh i love that get it girl get it so if you guys i know we have some new
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people joining us i'm here with miss brittany of my beautiful fluff she's a boutique owner and she owns a
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brand and she's introducing us to her brand telling us her story about like trying
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to source t-shirts above a 3x her like two horrible mishaps like that
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do you laugh at it now i laugh at it now and actually the green 4x's i was at an
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event and i just accidentally threw some in the tote with the white and somebody liked it i'm like oh okay
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well if you like it i love it right right so um kim had a question
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real quick she's like how did you even connect with this person
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that's another story did you go to china or did you like just like email
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email i started off there was a site where you could kind of source in the u.s
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and the price for plus size t-shirts i'm like if i pay 40 i'm gonna have to charge you who double
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that i'm like i'm not paying 40 for a t-shirt so then i just went online and i started googling for
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manufacturers i've tried plus manufacturers and i tried normal and after i got done researching i ended up
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on alibaba i connected with a bunch of different manufacturers and i started with samples then i
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actually placed an order but you get your best work when you get the sample
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sometimes after that the quality is not the same oh no oh no so real quick we have some
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people are saying good morning so hello keisha cornell dawn um
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mr tammy um jeanette renee you've got some of your folks in here
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too sis they're over here saying hey brittany hey y'all kendra said hey brittany um
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we've got lena from italy we've got italy in the house up right now we've got felicia from virginia
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all right all right so as you guys are joining in we're doing our fun you know speaking of curtis interview miss brittany's answering
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questions about her like journey right her journey to launching her business and her brand
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and kind of like fast forwarding to today so um so now you've got your
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your product and my beautiful my beautiful fork today has it gone
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through any reiterations has it got kind of evolved like if someone wants to go to your site today
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is it the same site that it was like five years ago not at all it's gone through different
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ideations websites changes that my first logo
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was i didn't i ended up changing that because i thought it was it was too colorful it's similar but not the same so we've
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undergone some changes we've expanded our product offerings just because of things that people have
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asked for we added baby fluff because i had a friend and she's like
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you've got fluffy why don't you have baby food i'm like well give me a moment to design it and
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you can have your baby fluff
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oh sorry our dog is like freaking out mocha let's go
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everyone local always wants to make her own debut mocha bed stay stay
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i'm so sorry so for this so with with my triple fluff oh my gosh
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i'm so sorry oh of course she waits till i talk more so what products can people get on you so i
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know i'm assuming we can already do t-shirts so we have t-shirts what else can folks
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buy from your because i i want to set it up for this like what you were sharing with me earlier
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we have t-shirts we have journals we have tote bags we have
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our weekender bag which is really popular it's like a big bag right it's a big bag
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like i can put four tote bags in that bag oh it's okay keep going
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like when i do my when i did my last photo shoot i had all of my outfit changes boots shoes and
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everything in that bag okay so i need so so you're basically telling
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us we all need a weekender bag if you carry a lot of stuff like i do yeah you need one it's
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it's my favorite bag the only thing that i don't like about it is it doesn't have a zipper but it is kind of nice because then i
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can just throw other tote bags that have a zipper inside of it and instead of carrying four bags i can just carry one
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all right all right so let's talk about these journals because you had shared with me like you
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have a community you do this contest share with everyone like what you do and how you activate
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your community okay so i had an idea a few years back i
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wanted to do a contest because people always ask me about the characters and when i'm doing events
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they're like oh this looks like my aunt this looks like me this character looks like me they're like is this one you there is
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one that's actually me but a lot of them are just characters so i decided
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to do a contest called show off your fluff and you get to send in a picture where you feel the most beautiful and then we let our
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facebook family vote on the winner our first one was three years ago
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and our first winner was rasheeda she is beautiful and from her winning
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the contest we became friends she's also my brand ambassador she's an amazing model and a supportive
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person so it was like the contest spawned more and so this year
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actually after i get off here i will be announcing this year's winner oh so i'm really excited there was a lot
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of beautiful entries i'm glad that i didn't have a chance to vote because i would have voted for everybody
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right so when you say when what is it that the contest is and what do they win
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the winner gets their the picture that they submitted gets turned into a character they're placed on our line for it with
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that character for our brand and they win a gift basket of all of the products that have them on
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it so like last year's winner they got the t-shirt they got the mug they got the notebook the fanny pack
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and all the things with their image on it oh that's so cool now um uh dawn her website is
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mybeautifulfluff.com um and we'll reshare the link in the comments and we'll also put it in the
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description so that you can go and visit her website so have you done so you said you did
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this started this three years ago so do you have like a collection of like all the girls like so far on one product
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or are you gonna wait to like you hit like you know a certain milestone i would probably wait till i get
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a little bit more this will be our third one we expanded it the second year so we actually have two
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winners this year we'll actually have three we'll have one for my brand ambassador team
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that i'll pick randomly and we'll have one from the entry that were submitted with something from my brand on and then
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we'll have the winner that won from the votes from our facebook family oh that's awesome so for your facebook
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family so you have a facebook community i do tell us about that
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it's just my facebook business page it's just people that share support
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and engage so do you drop like do you give options for people to pick products to
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give feedback on what's coming new like how interact like what do you do with that i do some of that within our
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facebook group kind of show them some of the designs and even on our page i'll show them like this or
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that and they don't know subconsciously you're helping me pick what's going to be next that part it's not even subconsciously
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right like it's just like i need your help i want to make sure it smells tell me what you don't get
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so okay so you have this business and for those of you guys who are still tuning in just tuning in i'm here with miss
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brittany of my beautiful fluff and she's a boutique owner um she's based out of iowa
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you said yes she's based out of iowa and you know she is telling us a little bit
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about her journey of how she started a little rocky but now she's got this versioning community
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and so last year march rona
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it has been a journey in march we were at around the
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time that the quarantines and things started happening we were supposed to be going to virginia
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for the size overrated awards to accept my first award but that got cancelled
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because of corona that weekend we had everything packed we were ready to go and we weren't sure if it was going to
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happen or not but it did end up getting postponed so that was sad and then we
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had a lot of other events last year well the year before corona hit we'd done about 30 events
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in indianapolis chicago and at home wow so we look forward to doing that for
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another year but corona kind of changed things so it forced me to be online more and kind of alter our
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strategy online post more be more strategic i became our graphic designer kind of
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figured out canva to kind of make my page look better and that's went through different
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canva for our indie business owners camera is the jam i use canva canva you can remove the
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background it has me feeling like hey i could be a graphic designer that's kind of cute right right it's definitely empowering
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for the small business owners so for our fellow business owners out there if you're trying to figure out how to do what you can do with what you
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got canva is where you can have some fun and play around with something so for you you had to pivot from like
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physical events to online and really nurture and develop your online community
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right yeah how has that impacted your business like now like has it
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allowed for you to create like you know deeper connections makes more sales
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you know innovate like let us know how that works um it's been a process and trying to
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grow our online we did an ambassador search so we've added more ambassadors to kind of help
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generate content spread the word and they are so amazing we we started out with four after our
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ambassador search we added 12 new ambassadors so it was really exciting seeing the growth
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and they are so amazing like i love them they're they are all sweet they all share they
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make great content they're just awesome they're just awesome so
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for you um like have so this kind of you have to pivot a
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little bit it sounds like you had to do a pivot but with this pivot it's allowed for you to
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create deeper and more connected relationships am i hearing that right
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in a way i won't say that i don't miss events because when you're at events i'm not good
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online i always feel awkward there's something about being in person when i'm at my table with my stuff
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i can tell them stories in a way that i don't know right now you're doing great right now but see i
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don't think you're always your own worst critic and i don't feel like i do good online so like
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but when i'm in person i can tell people the story behind the journal talk to them in a way that i don't feel i can connect
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online because it's not somebody talking back to me it's just like me talking so i feel like
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i'm just talking in an empty space but it's i'm just awkward so but listen i'm awkward too i am and i'm
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a nerd and i'm horny like we just got to own that about ourselves right like we just have to own
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those parts rather than allowing it to kind of define and push so through this rhonda like how was how
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was um i guess for lack of a good word how was your mental like how was that transition and
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figuring out what you're going to do it was hard um between the business
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and then i guess you want to call it home school during that period that weird awkward phase
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i'm like i don't know what i'm doing with homeschool i don't know what i'm doing with my business right now
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so i it was a mess all i could do was pray meditate and
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hope that this passed quickly which it didn't so we just just kind of worked through it so i mean a lot of people initially
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thought okay this is gonna be temporary it's gonna work through we're gonna bounce back and then it stayed right and like and
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we're still here it's like a year later and we're still kind of like navigating through how do you feel today
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versus like how you felt before i think now that i know that it's probably not gonna change anytime soon
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i've just kind of started to adjust you just kind of get used to it and work
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through it you don't really have an option right and so when you say work through
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it and adjust what are some of those things like that you've realized that could probably be helpful for another business owner
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um one of the things that i've noticed is before corona because i did do the
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events i wasn't as active on social media and you've got to find a balance because when you're on
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there regular you'll get better engagement it's easier when you do it on a regular basis so i've started
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actually scheduling out my content more and planning more than i did before i
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just kind of post on the fly and so i'm doing a better job at that and actually using my email list because i'm
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like for a while i wasn't yes yes
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oh miss linda said that you are good online you speak very clearly so like thank you
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you felt that she was being awkward you over here doing well sis
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you know and the more that you do it the better you get right so have you started doing have you done
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lives like have you gone live in your groups very rarely i go
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with you i'm gonna challenge you try it once a week for a month just try it
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i'm just saying that's my challenge to you i can't turn down the challenge so i guess i'm gonna try it
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i mean because if you've already created this community in this group that you want to nurture like why not
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you know get to know them in a different direction right or in a deeper way right especially they'll and they you know
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they'll be so encouraging to you too i'm so poor i'm gonna pick a day and i'm
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gonna do it for a month and i'm gonna try it bam and it's only four of them right so when you think about it
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it's only four you could do this you could do this so um
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uh so you're doing great so like going live you'll have fun just like how we go live right so we go
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live to have conversations so folks can get to know me in a different way because i'm not good
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at taking pictures i'm so i'm not good on my personal instagram i know this about myself
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and then while i'm dressed i'm like let me snap it in stuff if i remember because sometimes i'll be
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quick to just change the clothes and put on something else but this dress is hella comfy so i may
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be in this all day plus it's starting to get warm um ah
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keisha says that she wants to be a facebook friend with you she's like oh she likes your energy look
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at you keep look at you well send me a request there you go miss
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keisha she said holler at her she said hey girl right okay
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um oh tammy said i needed that marie my mom keeps telling me to go live on my business page
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i'm i'm online shy though i'm better in person
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exactly tammy i feel you that's me so listen
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just do it right like you can actually lead with
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that i'm saying hi i'm more of the shy person i'm more of an introvert
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this is new for me so y'all be kind to me leave with those like let your folks
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know because look because you were shy and you did this live
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you didn't incur and you were telling your truth you encouraged miss tani
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to to think about it and to try it on her page you'd have made a new friend keisha
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look what happened and you just joined somebody else's life you didn't even go live yourself i know it's easier to go on somebody
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else's life because because you leave the conversation when i do it
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i'll do it and i sit down and i have an appointment and then i'll get up and i'll be like okay nobody's on here i'm talking to myself
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i'm done listen what you do is you just use like the tools to schedule to notify use your
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email join us we're going live right if you have these conversations with
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your you know let them know um you'll be able to
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um like when you when you do this you'll be able to let your folks know so they can join you
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so that you so even if you're talking to one person you appreciate and have fun and treat
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that one person like they're 50 right and then you're just having a
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conversation you're getting to know you're having fun you're playing around and then before
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you know it like this is like watching
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right so with you so i'm i'm really proud of you love
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okay so so what is next for my beautiful fluff like what can we see
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wait what i mean you're about to announce your new um i don't want to say fluffy's because
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like i don't think that's the word but you're winners of your contest yes what else do you
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have coming up oh i have a guided journal
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that i'm working on releasing okay
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working on possibly a book get it girl so those are just
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two of the things i'm playing with i'm launching a website for me so that i can blog more because i like
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to write and i have more time now so i'm gonna use it to write i've done some
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guest writing for my friend who has the beautiful project so i've done two blogs with her so i'm
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like you know what i'm gonna start my own blog in addition to the one that i have for my business so i can just
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vent i love it and you know we'll have to talk offline because i think there's a way that you can actually
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integrate those two because my beautiful fluff is so intrinsically you that you know like
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it's kind of it one and the same rather than a separate site so like um you know just get it in
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so miss tammy says she gonna do one live this weekend well let me know when you're going live
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and i'll tune in well we will all tune in miss tammy
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there we go so i'm i'm loving it so for you you have a guided journal coming out
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you're working on a book or you're working on like the framework for your book on the framework okay it's not an easy
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feat i'm working on a book proposal right now since and it's like
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it's intense but yeah so for you you have your
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community and for those who are just tuning in i'm here with miss brittany of my beautiful fluff she has an online
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boutique where she sells t-shirts tote bags weekender bags
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journals she has a contest that she what's the name what's the name of it again show off
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your fluff show off your fluff contest where her readers her community they you
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know kind of become um they entering the contest and then she illustrates them or gets them illustrated and turns them
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into characters and their character is on the products that they sell for that next year that
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is the coolest thing i love it i love it satoshi says she can't wait to get her merchandise
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get it satoshi boot so do me a favor let everyone know where they can find you
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how they can follow you how they can request to be your friend on facebook let us know everything on facebook
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it my personal page is just brittany washington there's a few but look for the one the fluffy shirt that's me
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um on instagram facebook and pinterest it's shop my beautiful fluff
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if you want to if you have any questions directly you can email me it's britney b-r-i-t-t-a-n-y at mybeautifulfluff.com
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and i believe we just need your website url and my website is just mybeautifulfluff.com
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awesome awesome awesome keisha said me and my daughter are broke both fluffy so i will be ordering keisha
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shout out to you honey could you be you'd be on here and just support a lot of our guys so thank you miss
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keisha thank you you know i have to uh i have to call out folks like miss tammy and miss keesha
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maybe if they'd be here they'd be coming in they'd be like hey girl and they'd be supporting the hell out of our guests so i love it and i
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love y'all so thank you guys so much for tuning in thank you so much um thank you so much they said oh qantas
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said my beautiful fluff is an awesome brand yay that's one of my beautiful brand
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ambassadors thank you oh i see i love that they tuned in see look at her community look at that
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they showing up for you see i'm sure you go live and you tell your ambassadors to join you and they will show up with you and help
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encourage you sis see see they got you they got you so
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thank you guys so much for tuning in i am marie de niro the creator of the kirby fashionista your plus size fashion
30:47
resource destination someone had asked like what the curry fashionista was all about we are a blog
30:52
turned digital media platform so we write about art we write articles about where to shop
30:57
who's doing what why they're do what's going on in the industry in the community um lifestyle body politics beauty
31:05
interviews we are your kind of like plus size fashion hub we're currently
31:11
doing a redesign i'm so freaking excited about this y'all because when we relaunch there's gonna
31:16
be extra fun little element and i will be getting i will be
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