A note from Angela…Jumping off the roller coaster and allowing the rubber to hit the road

(January-February 2026)

Consulting, coaching and educating aside for the moment, I felt the need to share a little of what business life looks like for me at Esteem Lingerie (our brick-and-mortar lingerie boutique). My hope is that maybe you won’t feel quite as alone especially if you are that small/medium business owner or manager who feels a little like you are operating in a vacuum… while riding a roller coaster…backwards and in the dark! (Pretty much sums up 2025!)

 I’m primarily specialized in the Lingerie Industry, a unique niche who’s carefully crafted façade is hiding yet another industry being forced to rapidly transform while still maintaining the compassion and clarity of being a human art.

I own a brick & mortar store in an age where it feels like the world is screaming brick & mortar is dead, especially when compared to the perceived convenience and shininess of the online world. Just to be clear I don’t believe that brick & mortar is dead however we are having to rapidly transform and put a focus back on the real humanity of what we do. Here’s the irony, I believe that the only way an independent lingerie boutique can succeed is if we embrace technology to free up our human resources to be the assets that they are.  More on that later however I want to share how this has played out in our boutique in January.

 “We all had to check our energy at the door”

October, November & December of 2025 felt like a bit of a dead drop at the end of the 2025 rollercoaster ride.  We experienced a bit of a perfect storm of way below average sales, chaos of supplier shipping schedules that resulted in a crazy blanket bombing effect of inventory, a drying up of cashflow that stripped even our reserves and a pervading doom and gloom of fear that while ephemeral seemed to be colouring everything.  As the generally realistic/optimistic person that I am…my team and I felt infected with this muddy malaise.  

Thankfully, not my first rodeo in the mud so we worked a lot with my favorite question. WHY?

WHY are we doing what we are doing? 

Believe it or not, one of the best ways to do a little energy hygiene is to simply ask WHY?

And continue to ask WHY? repeatedly until you find either the really good reason for doing what you’re doing, which validates and brings peace and purpose. OR we arrive at an answer that forces us to either stop what we are doing and declutter the baggage, so we don’t continue to mire down further in the mud.

Simply put, decluttering the baggage opens the space for better ideas!   It also opens the space so we can simply breathe clear ourselves some of the weight of obligation and overwhelm.

“We decluttered on all levels”

When most people think of decluttering, they think of that closet or drawer that is the shameful dark secret that we are too busy to deal with, yet we know it is weighing us down somehow.  What people often forget is our human clutter is rapidly expanding beyond just the tangible and we are being cluttered with the digital and the electronic as well. 

Think of your phone, do you have three or four home screens with icon after icon of apps? How about digital folders on your computer or the cloud? When you can’t find what you need when you need it, does it result in more clutter as you reinvent and save some more?  In the case of our retail store the clutter can be the few left-over items from previous lines; the 3& 4’s of bras and panties that when added together with other odds and sods of stock add up to money tied up in the inventory forgotten however needing to be freed. 

Bottomline; all that clutter stops us from having the space to be creative.  The clutter is like the resulting hangover after drinking. Simple question – is holding onto the clutter in any form worth the never-ending hangover?

“We leaned on our relationships and levered off of the strength of them”

There is always a moment of magic and clarity when we have the courage to deal with a situation in honesty, integrity and authenticity. We had some honest, tough and openly authentic conversations with our suppliers about where we are at right now. We discussed options and came up with a way to dig out from the situation.   We didn’t just have one discussion, sometimes there were many. 

Here was the interesting part, as we went back and forth with the suppliers, there was a lot of mutual support. Neither of us particularly liked the situation, however because everyone felt like they were aware of the true nature of the situation it brought a calmness and it preserved and I believe strengthened the relationships. 

We also got out of our shop to patron other local businesses; take a few minutes to chat and gain different perspectives.  Local relationships with other local businesses are the grassroots marketing and referrals that are more powerful than paid advertising.  Are you the brick-and-mortar business who only champions “shop local” only when you are asking people to support your business? Reciprocity is what truly empowers local economies.

“We Simplified with the Power of 3”

As a team we had the 3 things that we were focusing on in January – keep in mind we worked in short bursts in between clients:

-              Our team’s energy hygiene – questioning the WHY? behind everything we do in the shop. This simplified everything from the mundane of where cleaning supplies were kept to the major of policies and procedures that affect daily operations. The WHY? exercise also revealed areas where we need a little more education or collaboration to work better as a team. Some of the best moments were when we realized that we can all feel the relief of letting go of something that no longer serves or is a hated remnant of “that’s the way we have always done it”.

-              We DECLUTTERED!! Whether it was a drawer, a closet, the racks and merchandise, online folders, paperwork we touched it all.  We did it bit by bit 15 to 20 minutes each day.  The beautiful part was near the end of the month once we had decluttered, we were inspired with a new flow for the entire store, a breath of freshness that customers are noticing and being drawn to.

-              Levering on our relationships we feel like we are working much more collaboratively which is already empowering these relationships to redefine how we are moving forward in the future…the true chance to create better systems, to replace the ones that are no longer serving us.

I have some real excitement about February! It feels like there will be the energy to be creative and we are experimenting with some forms of marketing that we haven’t used in recent years only with a new spin… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Take Care & Keep Smilin’

Ang