What Will You Change?

You’ve done your New Year’s Resolutions. Your goal planning. You’ve either met with your team or your New Year Kick-Off Team Meeting is coming up in the next couple of weeks.  

There is just something exciting and rejuvenating when that Calendar turns from Dec. 31 to January 1st. It’s like a reset on old goals we didn’t hit and a fresh new runway on new goals we set for the first time.  

Tony Robbins made this statement that really resonated with me, he said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and they underestimate what they can do 5 years.” 

I average about 3-5 years to achieve my lofty goals. Every New Year’s Day for the past over 10 years, my husband and go to a coffee shop we’ve never been to before and we write all of our business and personal goals on a napkin. And we hang those napkins on the side of our fridge.  

Last year we went through all our previous years, and it was so interesting to see that our big goals, like our major income jumps, new homes, new cars, and body health, we were running for about 3-5 years – we always hit them. We hit every goal, but we noticed that we had been writing the same goals for about 3 years and a couple of big ones were about 5 years.  

So, when I heard Anthony Robbins’s statement about overestimating what we can accomplish in one year and underestimating what we can accomplish in 5 years, it really resonated with me.  

It doesn’t make me set smaller goals, but it does help me set management expectations.  

I also looked at the lifestyle habits that go into making those goals and here is the 21 – 90 rule.  

It takes 21 consecutive days of doing something to create a habit and 90 consecutive days to have that habit become a lifestyle.  

It’s easy to think about small things like walking every day, getting on your Peloton bike, leaving work to go do yoga every evening, or let’s say you want to drink less coffee or soda and more water.  

There’s a great app called Couch to 5K, and it literally will take you from being a Couch Potato to running a 5K!! It’s pretty awesome. If you’re a super Couch Potato it will start you out walking for only 5-10 mins per day and then gradually increase your minutes and then have you add in a slow jog for like 10 seconds.  

If you’re a little more advanced the app might start you out with some short intermittent walking and jogging on your first time out.  

The point is that it’s changing your regular habits in small, tiny bite sizes.  

I’m going to relate this to business in a minute. But let’s face it – we have to take care of ourselves first or you can’t take care of your business. So, let’s take another goal of less coffee and more water. May you drink 5 cups every day and you want to drink 2. Start out drinking 4 1/2 cups for one week. Then 4 1/4 cups for the next week. As you decrease your coffee intake increase that amount with water.  

The idea is small little habit changes. What else must change? You have to have your own stash of water so maybe you install a water purifier at the store, or you start having water delivered. Maybe you move the coffee machine out of your office.  

Look for the triggers that trigger the old habit so that you’re not triggered by them.  

When we look at the Couch to 5K – you will need to rearrange your schedule. I am highly energized and creative in the mornings, so I don’t want to use up my creative energy on working out. I start every day with 10 mins of yoga but that’s it. But my sleepy time is in the later afternoons so that is a good time for me to work out and then it’s refreshing so I can have more energy for the later afternoons and evenings.  

Can you put your Peloton bike in your office? Is there a yoga studio near your store? If not, can you do yoga in a back room? The idea is to look at the changes you need to make in your everyday habits and everyday life

Your life currently is running on the habits you have created over the past year or many years. Simply saying to yourself, “I’m going to fit this in…” is a setup for failure or very short-term success.  

You have to change things.  

Let’s apply this to business.  

Let’s say you want to increase your sales by increasing your UPT’s – Units per Transaction. Did you plan for changes to add more small items leading up to your cash register? There’s a reason that Home Goods and TJ Max have their checkout lines winding through shelves of small goods. That’s not an accidental overflow of merchandise. That’s intentional UPT strategies.  

What changes in your store layout can you make to increase your UPTs? What changes in your merchandise can you make to increase your UPTs? Have you considered going to the market to purchase smalls – like home decor and jewelry and other home and clothing and closet accessories?  

Is your jewelry merchandised on a back wall or do you have it merchandised where customers have to walk by it to get to the cash register? Do you have a big wide-open space in front of your check-out area? What changes can you make to add shallow shelving and hanging displays for your impulse buys?  

Let’s talk about your website.  

What if you went from $0/ mo. to $5K/ mo. on your website sales? What if you’re already at $5K and you want to go to $10K per month? What changes do you need to make?  

If you’re currently struggling to get items photographed and onto your website, set small goals, like the app from 0 to 5K but you can call it from Rack to Web. Set small doable goals and do them repeatedly every day, even if it’s like 2 items online or 10 items online per day.  

Sending out emails. Don’t try to go from 1 email every couple of months to 1 email every week. Start with 1 email per month or 2 emails per month. Start where you are and make a small habit change to move yourself forward creating each step as a new habit as you go.  

Maybe you need to hire someone to do your emails. MailChimp has wonderful training and also, I’m totally available for hiring to train your staff on how to do emails.  

This brings me to the next change. What needs to truly happen in your business to reach your goals? Is your staff currently operating at maximum capacity? If not, take a look at their daily activities and implement changes. I have my staff do a self-evaluation at the end of the year and then they are awarded their Year End Bonuses. One of the questions I ask is about their personal interests as well as what areas of our company they would like to work more in or on or learn more about.  

Oftentimes, to grow our businesses we need to hire more people. When you’re looking at hiring, you need to look at the ROI. In other words – if you want to spend more time working ON your business rather than IN your business, you need to look at hiring people to take over tasks that you currently do.  

If you want to experience income growth, do you need to hire more in-store staff or more online staff? Do you need to hire a marketing company? Do you need to hire a photographer?  

This doesn’t mean that you run out right now and hire people, you might not have the budget to do this, but what changes do you need to make and are you working towards those changes?  

What kind of training program do you have your team on? Do you have a progressive training program in place to further their skill sets so they can do more, and you can do less?  

I think you get the idea. We have to implement real, honest change in our lives to realize the real honest change which is reaching our goals.  

Remember the words of Tony Robbins – most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in 5 years.  

Whatever goals you set last year or 3 years ago – don’t abandon those, keep working towards them but evaluate what change needs to happen by you in order to reach them. The goals you set for this year… what change do you need to do in order to achieve them?  

Real change starts small. With small consistent steps. You are literally re-programming your brain. Your actions are the result of nerve impulses that are firing so when you do new habits like substituting coffee for water in small amounts you are literally re-wiring your brain to fire new impulses of less coffee and more water. Less cravings and dependency on caffeine and more cravings and dependency on water.  

And so, it is with every little change in your business. Changing your actions from simply putting your intake on the racks to putting your intake into a photo box, snapping a photo, and uploading it to your website. Making small changes to train your staff instead of you doing the work.  

But you can do it. It’s all possible. 

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