Happy New Year! Welcome to 2020!!
A clean slate, a new chapter, fresh new start.
By now you’ve run your numbers from last year and analyzed the heck out of them. You’ve pulled out of the archives of your computer, the New Year’s Resolutions you set for last year, compared them to what you actually did and then cried, laughed or poured yourself a cocktail.
You’ve figured out your profit or loss, hopefully it’s a profit. You’ve figured out your sell thru ratio, customer retention rate, email open rate and you’ve analyzed your budgets. You’ve already set new goals for higher, fatter numbers containing more commas and zeroes for this year.
There is one thing however that is vitally, crucially, incredibly important and I wonder if you did it… it’s important for a lot of reasons if you want this year’s New Years Resolutions to stick.
Did you…
make a long list of all your wins in 2019? Every win, big or small?
And then did you take a few minutes to celebrate them? I mean really celebrate them. Give each one a wink and smile, a fist bump a good amount of gushing?
I’m sure you anguished over, brooded over, strategized about, lost sleep over the things that didn’t go so well. You probably spent a lot of time and energy on the things that didn’t go so well…
… did you give as much thought, time and attention to your wins and successes of 2019 as you did your losses or as I like to call them, “learning experiences?”
We tend to put a lot of time, attention and focus on what didn’t go right, how much we didn’t make, what went wrong, what needs fixing. Could you possibly conceive the idea that if you spent as much time celebrating and reflecting on your wins, as you do brooding over your losses… that you’ll end up with more wins?
Success Breeds Success in New Years Resolutions
When you take the time to revel in your wins, your wins start to take wing. All of a sudden you’re feeling enthusiastic, energized and new ideas are popping into your head related to your wins and how you can capitalize on those wins.
It’s as important or even more important to spend as much time or even more time celebrating your wins than time spent contemplating your losses or “what went wrongs.”
What are some of your wins?
Did you get a new website? Maybe you didn’t sell a single thing, but you got a new website -well done!
Did you sell maybe $1000 on your website? Or $10,000 on your website? Instead of feeling bad that you didn’t sell $100,000 on your website, take a moment to reflect on what you did sell. Feel some gratitude towards that customers that purchased from your website, feel gratitude towards your web developer, be thankful for your staff who packed and shipped the items and the delivery people who made sure your customers got their orders from your store.
Did you get new followers on FB or IG?
Did you start pinning a little bit more this year? Celebrate those few shares or likes that your pins got.
Did you get a new POS software or upgrade an existing one? Did you learn some new things that your software can do that you didn’t know? What are the good things that happened around that? You made a step forward. Toast that success!!
Did you start sending emails to your database? It doesn’t matter how many people un-subscribed from your database this year, if they un-subscribed they no longer want a relationship with you any more and that’s OK. We have to clean out the people and customers to make room for new ones… so celebrate that you added some new names to your database. Give thanks to the un-subscribers because at one time they bought from you or opted in and they were a customer in that past that helped build your business to what it is today.
Did you get new customers?
Did you go to a conference this year?
Did you get new business cards?
Did you get your branding done?
Did you have a consultant come to your store and help you with your numbers and efficiency?
Did you have me, Colleen from Monkeys In Hats come to your store and help you with marketing, store layout and new ways to generate revenues and sales?
Did you run a Facebook ad this year? It doesn’t matter if it was successful or not, did you do it?
Maybe you lost a key staff member this year, did you find someone better or, in losing that person did that encourage your other staff to step up their game and bloom bigger in their roles?
A girlfriend of mine named Chrystal Rose, posted that every month in 2020 instead of hosting some kind of networking group – which in our area there is an overabundance of… she’s hosting a Wins Night. She said even if no one else shows up, she’s going to celebrate all her wins for the month, every month. She recognized the importance of celebrating wins and the routinely infrequency that we do this. This is so awesome!! For sure I’m going and I encourage you to consider this in your own businesses. Host a Wins Night for area business owners or include your customers, or simply celebrate wins with your staff.
I make my own Daily Planner because I like to customize my planner to me.
On my planner there’s a place for Ah-Ha’s and Lessons Learned… which I try to learn something or have an ah-ha moment every day and then there’s a place for me to write down wins from my day. It’s a great way to end the day – writing 3 wins!
I have created some Staff Daily Sales Sheets for some of our clients and we included at the bottom the same thing – a place for staff to write 3 wins from their shift. It’s really nice for staff to end their day of work on a good reflective note. It’s also cool for your staff to share some wins that maybe you didn’t witness. Success breeds success. When your staff has to think about their wins and write them down it brings those wins from the back of their brains to the forefront of their brains and they end up having more wins in the workplace.
You’ve already made your New Years Resolutions and before you get any deeper into 2020, grab a notebook and make good long list of all your wins from 2019 and soak them up, feel gratitude for them and revel in them.
As you dive deeper into 2020 – take some time each day, each week or each month to list your wins and celebrate them.
In support of our New Years Resolutions and to get the ball rolling in celebrating our wins, watch for a post on our Facebook page every Friday where you can share your wins for the week. Let’s celebrate our own wins and celebrate each other’s wins this year and watch success breed more success.
