You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"Should've just walked away as narrated by MMA announcer, Steve Inman...."}]

Bonus 4 8 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>You Still Here? Bonus: Steve Inman Edition | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Should've just walked away as narrated by MMA announcer, Steve Inman....

You Still Here? Bonus: Steve Inman Edition

 Should've just walked away as narrated by MMA announcer, Steve Inman....

Coy Knobel

Don Day Weather

Mostly sunny in Wyoming on Monday with a chance of afternoon rain in some areas. Partly to mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain in some locations.  Highs from the low 70s to near 90. Lows from the low 40s to near 60.

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Sunny today with a high near 84 and becoming cloudy overnight with a low near 56.

Sunny today with a high near 86 and mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 7 p.m. and a low near 56.

  Sunny today with a high near 86 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 59.

  Sunny today with a high near 81 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 52.

   Sunny today with a high near 86 and mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 57.

 Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 80 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 43.

 Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 75 and mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 46 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph.

 Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., increasing clouds and breezy today with a high near 82 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 49.

  Increasing clouds today with a high near 77 and mostly cloudy overnight a low near 44.

 Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., increasing clouds and breezy today with a high near 73 and wind gusts as high as 29 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain, a low near 49 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., increasing clouds today with a high near 80 and cloudy, gradually becoming partly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 48.

Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park

:  Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 74 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 40.

Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 86 and mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 9 p.m. and a low near 58.

:  Chance of rain mainly after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 79 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 57.

  Mostly sunny today with a high near 85 and mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain and a low near 56.

   Slight chance of rain after 4 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 80 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 59.

   Patchy fog before 9 a.m., mostly sunny today with a high near 84 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain, patchy fog after 3 a.m. and a low near 52.

:   Mostly sunny today with a high near 84 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 54.

Mostly sunny today with a high near 85 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain mainly before midnight, a low near 57 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

   Sunny today with a high near 84 and wind gusts as high as 18 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain after midnight, a low near 59 and wind gusts as high as 16 mph.

:  Sunny today with a high near 86 and wind gusts as high as 17 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain, a low near 56 and wind gusts as high as 16 mph.

  Sunny and hot today with a high near 90 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 60.

   Sunny today with a high near 84 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 57.

  Sunny today with a high near 85 and cloudy, gradually becoming partly cloudy overnight with a low near 55 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

   Sunny today with a high near 84 and partly cloudy overnight a low near 58.

  Mostly sunny today with a high near 79 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 55.

  Sunny today with a high near 82 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 51.

   Sunny today with a high near 81 and mostly cloudy overnight a low near 58.

   Sunny today with a high near 82 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 54.

   Sunny today with a high near 81 and mostly cloudy overnight a low near 55.

Daycap 8 17 26

<title>Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, August 17, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Mostly sunny in Wyoming on Monday with a chance of afternoon rain in some areas. Partly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain. Highs from the low 70s to near 90. Lows from the low 40s to near 60.

Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, August 17, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Seven years in prison beginning at 19 for putting a club into the head of a Swiss miner was followed by a couple of decades as a preacher and labor movement orator.

His personal reformation rewarded him with a Wyoming state role enforcing children and animal welfare.

But after just months on the state job, allegations of “white slavery” involving two teenage Casper girls in 1924 meant Baptiste John Minort needed to resign his state position and pulpit role. 

Those charges were eventually dropped and he was back filling a pulpit in Torrington when a “disturbing the peace” charge in 1926 was filed, alleging he had been in a rooming house with a woman in Nebraska he claimed was his wife under an assumed name.

An old character that many believed was buried and destroyed for the 42-year-old Torrington grain store manager and police court judge suddenly had resurfaced.

“Torrington Pastor Slays Family, Suicides,” the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926. “Wife and Four Children Dead as Climax to Late Scandal.”

Newspapers across the country carried the headlines that an Associated Press reporter wrote likely were caused by “wagging tongues” and “domestic difficulties.”

Minort was born Feb. 20, 1884, in France and emigrated to the U.S. in 1892 to Missouri.

In 1901, at 17, he married Luisa Elizabeth Huber and they had five children, including Baptiste John Jr. in 1902, sons Carl, David and Clarence in 1912, 1915, and 1917, and daughter, La Von in 1922.

When he was 19, Minort was charged and convicted for killing a Swiss miner, Vincent Gaffney, at a coal camp in Riverton, Missouri, in March 1903 after a dispute about missing money from Gaffney’s room. Gaffney boarded with the Minort family.

“Minort claimed that Gaffney drew a revolver on him, then, in order to protect himself, he struck Gaffney twice on the head with a club, knocking him against a barbed wire fence, after which he choked him,” the Henry County Democrat reported on March 26, 1903. “Gaffney died as a result of his injuries.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Second-Degree Murder"}]

After his conviction on a second-degree murder charge, Minort was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after seven.

Newspaper accounts state that while in prison he started reading the Bible and when he got out moved to Nebraska. Whether he pursued formal religious training is not known.

 In May 1914, he took a role as a pastor at a Sterling, Nebraska, church and also had a role as the chairman and clerk of a Sunday school convention.

The Sterling Sun reported he was helping at a revival meeting in Falls City, Nebraska. His efforts in evangelism and teaching grew his church by 200 people, according to a report in the Norfolk Daily News.

By 1922, he was serving as a pastor in a church in Alliance, Nebraska, and was the main speaker at a Labor Day gathering in Casper.

The Casper Daily Tribune on Sept. 5, 1922, reported that Minort delivered an “inspirational address” that promoted the idea of trade unions and how they eliminated “classes” in society. Hundreds gathered to hear him.

“America has no class from which it is impossible to emerge,” he said. “America is distinguished throughout the world by the high standard of living which the masses of her people enjoy.”

By 1924, he had moved to Torrington and taken the pastorate of a Baptist church. He was appointed by Gov. William B. Ross to be the state commissioner of child and animal protection on July 22. Minort embraced the role by bringing charges against 22 boys and girls involved in a wild Cheyenne party in October of that year at the YWCA and Pine Cove. 

He blamed the parents for allowing their children to be at the party.

He also made headlines by uncovering a plot of a stepson to accuse his stepfather of choking an old man to death so he could inherit his mother’s property.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mann Act Violation"}]

But on Nov. 8, he was accused by a federal grand jury of transporting two juvenile delinquent girls across the state line to Nebraska for immoral purposes under the Mann Act. Minort had taken the pair from their uncle in Casper and was supposed to take them back to a Cheyenne facility.

“The girls told police and federal authorities that Minort, instead of going to Cheyenne, stopped in Mitchell, Nebraska, where he is alleged to have mistreated them,” the Grand Island Independent newspaper reported on Nov. 12, 1924.

Minort responded that the charges were false and he had taken the girls there to be under the care of an aunt. Still, he resigned from his role as the state commissioner and stepped down from the pulpit. The Torrington community rallied around him and a fund was set up for his defense.

Those charges were eventually dropped by the federal district court in April 1926 because the girls could not be located to testify.

Meanwhile, Minort worked for the Cheyenne Police Department supervising chain gangs and then got a job managing the Torrington grain elevator. When the charges were dropped, he was named as a police court judge in Torrington and he resumed preaching at a church in the city.

On Nov. 7, 1926, Minort was caught by Bayard, Nebraska, police in a rooming house with a woman from Torrington who was not his wife. He had registered under the name of “Joe Lander and wife.”

A man from Torrington saw him and remarked he looked like Minort. The town’s marshal investigated and called Minort’s wife in Torrington at 3 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 8.

“Minort, after admitting his identity, asserted that he had been the victim of a ‘frame-up’ and that he had been forced at the point of a gun at Bayard (by men) to get into the automobile with the woman and had been intimidated into registering with her as husband and wife,” The Wyoming State Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926.

The newspaper reported that the landlady of the rooming house did not confirm his story. Minort was fined $25 and ordered to pay costs of $15.

On Saturday, Nov. 13, Minort resigned his post as a police judge for Torrington.

Early on Nov. 14 Minort, who had prepared a sermon he called “Breaking the Alabaster Box” for church that morning, took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot his wife in the head as she lay sleeping in a bed with their young daughter, 4. He then used a .22-caliber rifle to shoot his daughter twice in the head.

Two sons, who lay in their beds, were killed with one bullet to the head from a .32-caliber revolver. His second-oldest son was killed as he entered his mom’s bedroom with a shot to the head. He was dressed and, according to the Wyoming State Tribune on Nov. 15, had been working for another family in the country and likely returned home for church before being shot.

Minort took time to write letters to the sheriff, his surviving son at a college in Missouri, and to the public as well as to a religious rival in Casper.

Then he called the local undertaker just after 9 a.m. and told him he needed him at the house.

When the undertaker arrived, he could see Minort on the kitchen floor, gasping for air before he died, the Wyoming State Tribune reported. Police were summoned and found a mirror on the kitchen table that he apparently set up so he could shoot himself in the head.

They then discovered the breadth of Minort’s actions in eliminating his family.

In his letter to the public, Minort asserted that he had been framed in the incident with the Torrington woman in Bayard. In his note to the sheriff, he gave his son’s address at college in Missouri.

In a letter to his son, he explained that his mother had told him she would kill herself if he brought shame to the family again. Minort wrote he was going to save her from “spiritual torment” by killing her.

“I killed her and the rest of them rather than have the shadow of the past upon them,” he wrote. “Mother and children are in heaven and I suffer my own fate through the hands of destiny.”

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Minor told Baptiste John Jr. to just dig a hole and bury the family in one grave to save on burial costs and that he could sell a box of shells he had at the grain elevator for $20 to get some money to help with costs.

“Well my son, I must hasten, as the gun beckons to me and I must hurry before I have lost my nerve,” he wrote, adding that the rest of his son’s life was his own. “So, do the best that you can.”

A coroner’s grand jury ruled that the murders and suicide were all the responsibility of Minort. The family members were buried in Valley View Cemetery in Torrington.

Minort’s surviving son was a sophomore at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and learned of the shootings from the college dean as he wrote a letter to his father during the afternoon on Tuesday, Nov. 16, according to the Daily Standard newspaper in Excelsior, Missouri on Nov. 17, 1926.

John Minort along with Minort’s brother, Louis, the mayor of Lexington, Missouri, attended the funeral, which was packed with mourners from the Torrington community. All the slain were in caskets, Minort’s exhortation to his son ignored.

The community bore the costs of the funeral and burials, the newspaper reported.

The Western Nebraska Observer reported on Nov. 25, 1926, that the son “bore up bravely” to the tragedy.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Forgiving Mourners"}]

“It was remarked that the crowd seemingly were forgiving and even sorrowful in their attitude toward the dead man,” the newspaper reported. “Many were seen to pause beside his casket and drop a tear. … Torrington people, heard to comment on the affair after the funeral, declared that Minort had not been himself, to all appearances for several weeks past.”

Three years after the tragedy, the young Minort returned to Torrington and visited old friends. 

The Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald reprinted a story from the Torrington paper on June 16, 1929, that stated that Baptiste John Jr. had been involved in a cafe business and had to quit college due to lack of funds.

“He has enjoyed a fair success and will continue in the cafe business,” the newspaper reported. “His friends in Torrington are glad to learn that he is pleasantly located and making a success of his efforts.”

Minort went on to marry twice, once in 1934 in Missouri. The marriage lasted a year. He married his second wife in 1945 and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Baptiste John Minort Jr. lived his last years in Utah and died on Aug. 16, 1970. 

Heworked as cook for most of his life and is buried in Price City, Utah.

Pastor killed family Valley View Thermopolis 8 9 26

<title>Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Shocking headlines from 100 years ago after a pastor from Torrington gunned down his wife and four of his five children, then himself. He wrote he had brought shame to them when caught with a woman in a rooming house in Nebraska under an assumed name.

Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, August 17th.  I’m Mac Watson.

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Political groups spending millions of dollars on Wyoming's primary election are attacking U.S. House and gubernatorial candidates with fliers and commercials. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that some of their claims are exaggerated and some are downright false.

“The most startling of the political ads that we've seen this cycle is a flyer against Senator Eric Barlow, who's running for governor, which claims that he sponsored legislation to drive up fuel taxes. The instances it cites from 2020 and 2013, Barlow was actually fighting to keep fuel taxes low in both those instances. So if you follow the citations, they actually show him fighting to keep fuel taxes low, which makes those outright falsehoods. We see lesser degrees of, I guess, skewed information.”

Attack ads, even if their assertions are exaggerated or flatly untrue, is big business. 

PACs are spending hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars to do it.

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Nearly 23 years after Clifford “Russ” Haux vanished in the Red Desert near Wamsutter, his daughters are still haunted. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports the 42-year-old husband and father of three had gone out with a co-worker to free a stuck vehicle and never returned.

“Clifford ‘Russ’ Haux was out in the oil field, and his suburban got stuck, and he came back to free his suburban with his rigmate. Then he was trying to cross with his pickup truck to get to the other side, and he was unable to do so. So he took off and drove along the draw, and that was the last time anybody saw him again. Two years later his vehicle was found. His purple Ford Ranger pickup was found six miles directly down the draw where he was trying to cross. So that was the first time anybody found any trace of him. And inside of his vehicle, they found a suitcase with a couple of shirts. That's it. There's been no sign of him whatsoever in the 23 years since.”

The Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office can’t speculate about what might have happened to Haux after he left the vehicle. But there’s no evidence to date to suggest Haux was a victim, said Jason Mower, public information officer with the department.

Two Sheridan golfers won the lottery on New Year's Eve when they were selected to play at the toughest place to book a tee time in the U.S. Cowboy State Daily’s Jeff Welsch reports that all 11,000 tee times were booked in one hour and they played last week.

“What makes it exceptional is the size, the scale, the scope. Gigantic fairways, the size of football fields. You've got bunkers that'll swallow a golfer whole. They're huge, but the greens, more than anything else, some of the largest greens in the world are on this 18-hole course, which at 600 acres is four times larger than the average American course, and and and one of these greens is one of the largest in the world. So right away you've got something extraordinarily unique, and then on top of it they just charge $175 for a round.”

Sheridan’s Josh Gardner and Jared Stiver have played courses of all shapes and sizes, in all types of environments, foreign and domestic, but they say nothing could prepare them for Landmand.

Saratoga 19-year-old Jerahleigh Johnson can weld a roll cage, rebuild an engine, and smash a Cadillac with the best of them. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that her dad is proud of her demolition derby talent.

“Her dad said that he's had grown men come up to him after a derby, and say that they haven't been hit that hard in years. She's doing so well. In fact, she got her first sponsor this year when Grumpy Diorio, who owns the Grumpy Italian in Saratoga, decided he wanted to support her. So they sponsored her car this year. She rebuilt a 1982 Cadillac and competed in Rawlins last week.”

Jeraleigh’s latest machine is a hulking early-1980s Cadillac painted red, white, and blue, with white stars scattered across its rear quarter panels and two exhaust stacks punching through the hood.

I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

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Cowboy State Daily News continues now….

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Ann Simpson was remembered by family members Friday as a "grace giver" who lived a "an idyllic life" in the Bighorn Basin. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that hundreds gathered at the Christ Episcopal Church in Cody to celebrate Simpson, wife of the late Sen. Al Simpson.

“Anybody in Wyoming knows that Ann Simpson was as integral to Al Simpson's success as Al was. I think one of the comments that was made during her funeral on Friday, in which hundreds of people attended and several 100 more were watching online, was that Al Simpson wasn't a self-made man. He was an Ann-made man, and that really speaks a lot to her character. People talked about how she could be pretty blunt and frank with her opinion, but she always did so with compassion and empathy.”

94-year-old Ann Simpson was married to the late U.S. Sen. Al Simpson for 72 years. They had three children and a growing number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in addition to a tight-knit extended family and a vast community of friends. 

Raising show pigs is a huge commitment for Wyoming 4-H and FFA kids working toward the Wyoming State Fair. Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy reports then comes the bittersweet part — tearful goodbyes when the pigs are sold to become dinner for the less fortunate.

“They have what they term an extra pig or an extra hog, and these animals have either the option of going to a private buyer or now there's a new program in Wyoming started by our first lady Ginny Gordon, where you can take your pig and give it to a charity of your choice in your community. And this program is just great because not only do they raise these pigs, they get $750 for the one that is donated. They get to choose the charity, and they actually get to see all of their summer's work put to good use.”

Not only do the young owners have to ensure they keep their pig healthy and bring them to full weight, they also must train them. Show pigs must learn to prance around a ring with their heads held high to show off their assets. The goal is a grand-champion title. 

This is the fifth year Sam Husted and Sam Rollins have gone to Sturgis to work at The Buffalo Chip. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the Casper bartenders are known as 'The Sams' and they can make $1,500 per night. 

“For them, this is a huge contribution to their annual savings, and they look forward to it every year. The pair says that the rally's rowdy reputation hasn't exactly matched their experience. They said they have not had a single bad interaction with customers, and that the experience so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Their only negative critique was that they had already run out of two cans of glitter one week in, so they had to go the rest of the rally without their sparkle.”

bought a camper, friends came along and the two-week money-making marathon doubled as a strange sort of working vacation. They can make in a night what might otherwise take days or weeks, then step outside into one of the biggest parties in the world.

A slew of fossils from Earth's earliest primates have been discovered in southwestern Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that scientists say the tiny primate fossils, around the size of a mouse lemur, is evidence something strange was going on in Sweetwater County 55 million years ago.

“Several new fossils found at this spot called Smiley Draw in southern Wyoming, have revealed a lot of interesting things. They're similar to what we find elsewhere in Wyoming, but they're also different. You have species coexisting that would have been extinct or would have never coexisted in other spots where we're finding the same types of animals, so it just goes to show that even though we've learned so much from the early Eocene primate fossils recovered in Wyoming, there's still more out there and still more to learn.”

Wyoming has been a hub of primitive primate paleontology since the 1880s. The first fossils of lemur-like primates were discovered in the Bighorn Basin around that time.

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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on 

 - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our 

 channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

News image 8 17 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, August 17, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Monday's headlines include:
* Misleading Political Ads Everywhere
* Dad Disappeared From Wamsutter 23 Years Ago
* Playing The Most Exclusive Golf Course In The U.S.

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, August 17, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business

Kelli Tracy feels like she’s “living in a Hallmark movie.” She and her husband just closed on their own brick-and-mortar store in downtown Sheridan, and she’s now celebrating her 10th year in business. 

These days, her Lil Bee’s Bohemian clothing line ships all over the world, and the business brings in a comfortable $600,000 to $700,000 a year in sales. 

But, like any Hallmark movie, getting to “happily ever after” wasn’t an easy task. 

The journey started when she was unexpectedly laid off from a big corporate job in Florida as a quality assurance compliance manager. It was scary.

“I had just moved in with my now husband but, at the time, my boyfriend,” Tracy recalled. “And he was like, ‘Well you need to get a job. You need to maybe go back to bartending or go back to doing something so you have money coming in.’” 

Tracy had done plenty of bartending in college and had no intention of going back to it. She had a completely different idea, one people told her was crazy at the time.  

“The next day I started my own boutique with clothing out of my closet,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “That’s when Instagram first started. Like it was just coming out and the algorithms were great. Everything was great.”

She propped a mannequin she bought from California — a model she named Lola — in front of her phone, dressed it in her own clothes, and opened a Shopify account. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Lil Bee’s Bohemian was born."}]

Starting out, her biggest problem wasn’t finding customers. She had plenty of people clamoring for the outfits she was styling. 

Her trouble was finding inventory priced low enough that she could resell it with a healthy profit margin. 

“I didn’t know there were places like Fashion Go or like Marketplaces and all the things,” she said. “You can go to Dallas Market and like find all your vendors.”

Initially, to get inventory, she’d go to places like Ross and Marshalls to buy items for the outfits she was promoting on Instagram. It was rare, but if the outfits didn’t sell, she’d just return them.

That strategy wasn’t going to work long-term, she realized. She had to figure out something else.

“Then I met a lady named Holly who owns Baja Ranch and she’s the one who helped me,” Tracy said. “I was buying a bunch of her stuff off eBay, because it was really cheap, to resell. And so she asked me like, ‘What are you buying all this stuff for?’”

When Tracy explained she was starting a boutique and needed inventory, Holly explained where she could go to find wholesale items to resell. 

“I mean, you can buy from me,” she said. “But you can get all of this stuff here.”

And the prices would be much less expensive. Wholesale pricing, Holly explained, would let Tracy keep her margins, without relying on returns.

Tracy, meanwhile, helped Holly figure out how to start Instagram and Shopify accounts so she could improve her business model.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A $12,000 Surprise"}]

Once she had reliable wholesale sources, sales were booming. But there was a big problem. Somehow, despite making many, many sales, the money wasn’t adding up. 

“I was like, ‘Man, where is all the money?’ Like I know I didn’t spend all this money,” she said. 

Eventually she figured out that many of the purchases were landing in her business’ PayPal account. She thought that money would transfer to her bank account automatically, but it was sitting there, quietly waiting for her to go in and authorize its transfer.

“I was almost to the point of bagging it,” Tracy said. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this. I can’t really afford more stuff.’ And then I wound up with all this extra money.”

The business was saved, and Tracy realized she had to get more organized. The scare pushed her to tighten up her books and treat Lil Bee’s less like an experiment and more like the real business it was becoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Closet Wasn’t Enough"}]

As the business grew, so did its footprint inside the couple’s home. 

It was no longer just her own closet. It was every closet in the house. She put racks in the spare bedroom, the living room, and even one hallway.

“It was just taking over the house,” Tracy said. “It was bad. I remember looking over at my husband and his two kids and the dog and they all looked at me like I was crazy.”

Finally, one day her husband said, “Hey, if you go get a place like a studio or like an office, this whole entire closet here could be your personal closet.”

Tracy heard what he was really saying. It was time for Lil Bee’s to grow wings and fly. 

“I had the keys to a showroom the next day,” she said. “Within 24 hours.”

The business doubled in size and quickly outgrew the showroom. She moved it next to a big warehouse, and just kept upgrading from there. 

“At one point, I think I had two, maybe three warehouses,” she said. “It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

The growth looked impressive on paper. At peak, Lil Bee’s was doing more than $1.4 million a year in sales.

But the pace was grueling, the overhead relentless, and she was working all the time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Right-Sizing Her Business"}]

By year eight, she made some decisions that shape the business as it is today. 

First, she decided to start making her own clothing designs instead of just buying and reselling other people’s ideas.

That would also allow her to boost the quality. No more thin, disposable stuff. She wanted pieces that people could keep and love forever.

She also decided just how big she wanted Lil Bee’s to be. 

“It just got to bee too much,” Tracy said. “It was just more, more, more.”

She realized that if she downsized her business, she’d still remain profitable and she would have more time to focus on her own designs.

That turned out to be a fortuitous move. Her ‘70s-inspired clothes caught the eye of a rising country star — Lainey Wilson.

Laid off from a corporate job, Kelli Tracy started selling clothes out of her closet on Instagram. Ten years later, she owns Sheridan’s Lil Bee’s Bohemian and ships her '70s-inspired designs to people all over the world from her Wyoming storefront.

You Still Here? Bonus: Steve Inman Edition

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