Know Your Endgame, with Ciara Stockeland – Episode 194

Ciara Stockeland Know Your Endgame

Know Your Endgame, with Ciara Stockeland

Every business journey brings bumps and bruises along the way, but keeping your end goals in mind brings clarity in the face of distractions. In today’s episode, a fellow Profit First professional shares her lifelong entrepreneurial journey–and she’s not finished yet! Even though her focus is on the boutique business space, her tips, insights, and lessons learned apply across all types of businesses.

Ciara Stockeland began owning and operating businesses in her early teens. As a serial entrepreneur, her business mindset and tenacity led her to open her first store, Mama Mia, a high-end maternity store in Fargo, ND, in 2006. Shortly after, she opened Mode, a designer outlet store next to Mama Mia. In 2008, Ciara chose to merge her two stores into Mode and develop the concept into a franchise. Her vast experience in both retail and wholesale industries led her to launch the first to-market wholesale subscription box for boutique owners, which she built and sold within 18 months.

Most recently, Ciara has launched The Boutique Workshop, a coaching program for retailers. Ciara has been recognized as a Small Business Champion through Score, and most recently was awarded the Outstanding Franchise Small Business Award. She is active with Score, an organization that is the largest network of expert business mentors across the nation. Additionally, Ciara has been an active member of the International Franchise Association and an advocate for small businesses with her seat on the US Chamber of Commerce Small Business Council. On the personal side, Ciara has completed an Ironman triathlon and is currently training for another. She lives in Franklin, TN, with her husband, two children, and Bentley, the family dog.

You'll hear about Ciara's entrepreneurial journey and tips on identifying your passion and capitalizing on opportunities!

Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group.

Show Highlights:
  • Where Ciara’s inspiration for entrepreneurship came from as a young girl, and how she started her first business, an acting company for students, at age 13
  • How Ciara discovered her passion for being a “disruptor” for retail business and selling products
  • How Ciara capitalized on opportunities and her problem-solving skills to open her first and second retail stores and later merge the two
  • The steps Ciara took to franchise her business and begin her subscription box service
  • Lessons learned from growing to 13 franchises before selling the brand and moving on to her next steps
  • What it takes to build a business with the clear intention of selling it later
  • How Ciara built her coaching program as an outgrowth of questions she received and problems she could solve for other business owners
  • How Ciara’s coaching program, The Boutique Workshop, works with a membership level and a mastermind group, which offers peer support, benchmarking, and one-on-one coaching
  • Lessons learned about simplifying a business with inventory management challenges
  • The value in knowing your numbers—even if they are ugly!
  • How Ciara has seen Profit First principles smooth out the “entrepreneurial roller coaster”
  • Why Ciara came to Profit First and how this system has impacted her business
  • Highlights of Ciara’s advocacy work with the US Chamber of Commerce Small Business Council

 

Links and Resources:
Connect with Ciara:

Website –  www.theboutiqueworkshop.com

Visit the website to take the free class, Profit First for Retail, where Ciara takes a simple look at bite-sized pieces of what retailers need to know.Visit the website to find The Boutique Workshop podcast. New episodes are released weekly!

Connect with Dr. Sabrina:

Download our Workbook and take our Better Business, Better Life Assessment.

Learn more about the next How to Hire the Best course.

New! Now Available!!

The 4 Week Vacation book with bonuses!

Download Dr. Sabrina’s Introductory Training: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour

Join Dr. Sabrina in our Entrepreneurs Take Your Life Back! Community

 

About The Author

Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist and international best-selling author of the How to Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation™, is the founder of Tap the Potential and host of the Profit by Design podcast. At Tap the Potential, we work to free business owners from the constant demands of a growing business.

We believe work supports life, not the other way around. Clients in our Better Business, Better Life coaching program have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than they’ve ever had. Next, we send them off on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate their hard-earned journey to take their life back!

Dr. Sabrina and her team at Tap the Potential are on a mission to change the story of entrepreneurship from one of long hours, grinding it out, to one of sustainably profitable businesses that support and enhance life. The Tap the Potential Solution™ and our Tap the Potential Family of Business Owners are disrupting small business as usual. We are on our way to making the Tap the Potential Solution™ the mainstream model for growing business.

By 2023, 150 Tap the Potential clients will have taken 4 Week Vacations. These are the trailblazers, role modeling what’s possible for entrepreneurs. In many entrepreneurial circles, it is becoming more and more common for one entrepreneur to ask another, “Have you taken a 4 Week Vacation™?” (as opposed to asking “How many employees do you have?” or “What is your annual revenue?”). Taking a fully unplugged 4 Week Vacation is rapidly becoming the recognized symbol of entrepreneurial success.

Never one to accept the status quo or back down from a challenge, Dr. Sabrina’s How to Hire the Best series grew from her desire to solve the toughest hiring challenges interfering with her clients’ growth and profitability. What sprang from her experience working with entrepreneurs in rural areas catapulted her into becoming the world’s leading expert in attracting top talent in small businesses—no matter what hiring challenges those businesses are facing—and earned Tap the Potential’s reputation as the go-to resource for entrepreneurs committed to creating Great Places to Work with thriving coaching cultures and highly engaged team members working from strengths.

As The Business Psychologist, and with her years of driving profit in small businesses, Dr. Sabrina knows what it takes to find, keep, and motivate exceptional performance out of your biggest investment—team members.