A New Beginning
New Year Resolutions have become more of a joke than a reality. We make them, break them, and quickly forget about them.
Not long after Baby New Year waves good-bye to Father Time each year, I suspect most of us have already broken any resolutions we made to lose weight, get more exercise, or whatever promises we made to ourselves while still high on the holiday bubbles.
But what about resolutions for your business?
As soon as the busiest time of the year is in the immediate past, we’re ready for a rest and a chance to catch our breath before Valentine’s Day hits us.
But while catching our breath, we need to make those plans and commitments that are essential to insure that the Valentine holiday, as well as the whole rest of the year, will be as rewarding as December was. And if December wasn’t as rewarding as you had hoped, it’s time to consider why and what you can do about it. This is true regardless of what industry you are a part of.
The first quarter of a brand new year gives us a unique opportunity to learn from our past mistakes, as well as our successes, and to create a dynamic plan for the remainder of the year. In other words, now is the ideal time for new beginnings.
A New Beginning
Of course resolutions can be made at any time of the year but most of us think of January as a time for change and a new beginning. Since it is one of the slower months of the year in our industry as well as being the beginning of the tax year, it is the perfect time for us to reflect on the past and plan for the future.
Regardless of whether your holiday season was a great one or a disaster, now is the time to take advantage of that knowledge while it is still fresh in your mind. When you turn the page of the calendar to October later this year, much of what you learned will no longer be remembered.
And it’ll be all too easy to make the same mistakes all over again.
If you have a business and marketing plan already in place, now is a good time to dig it out, review it, and determine if you want to make any changes. But, even if you’re one of those procrastinators who haven’t developed a plan, you can still take advantage of the fresh memories of late nights, disappearing inventory, or whatever other challenges you faced during the holiday season.
It has been said that experience is the greatest teacher.
And this is particularly true in the gift basket business. Others can tell us what worked for them and what didn’t. But until we actually try ideas within our own unique communities using our individual skills and personality differences, we never know how they will work for us.
There are always those rare individuals, who are born marketers, and are an immediate success. Many of us, however, got into this business because we’re creative, not because we love marketing. Most of us create a successful business with a combination of knowledge gained from previous experience, along with research into the uniqueness of the gift basket industry, and a lot of trial and error.
It’s that trial and error that we can use as a foundation while growing a business. If we never stretch ourselves beyond our limits and try new things, the result will be more of the same. But we also need to take advantage of what we’ve learned as a result of each new endeavor.
Memories fade unless they are written down.
So, after each holiday season, I choose a day when I can grab a cup of coffee, close the door, remember and write. I record which marketing strategies worked and which ones didn’t. I remember what caused sweaty palms and what made me smile with pleasure.
I review the goals that I set last January and see how close I came to achieving them. And I begin the process of setting goals for the coming year. But goals, like New Year’s Resolutions, are merely wishful thinking unless you have a plan and are committed to putting that plan into action.
I check my inventory and see which products were quickly depleted and which ones are still staring at me from the shelves. I note which designs were instant hits and which ones received little interest. And I write all these memories down. Personally I use my laptop and then print them out. But you can use a pen and yellow legal pad or whatever other method you are comfortable with.
And while you’re at it, make sure you celebrate your past successes. If you don’t recognize what you did right last year, what motivation would you have for setting goals next year? You need to give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it!
While you have that laptop or yellow legal pad in front of you, write down as many things as you can think of that you accomplished. They don’t have to be big events but can be tiny things. Once you do this, you’ll see how far you have come. Hang the list up over your desk and let yourself feel good about what you’ve accomplished.
I take the time to think about what I would have done differently and what I want to change in the coming year. To be effective as a business owner, you need to look at more than just the work portion of your life. It’s time to reflect on why you went into business for yourself in the first place and where you are today in both your business and personal life.
Balance is essential.
It’s all too easy to get so consumed with building a business that other areas of life are neglected. The first of the year is an excellent time to take a step back and look at your life as a whole. Is it balanced? Or are you spending too much time with business while ignoring family, health, or other areas that you consider important? Perhaps you have another full-time job and are operating a gift basket business on the side. Think about how you can work smarter instead of harder to create the time to be a well-rounded individual with a successful business.
Then I create my strategy for the coming year.
Once I’ve spent time looking backward, it is time to look forward to a new year and a new beginning. You can call them goals, plans, or strategies, but regardless of what you call them, put them in writing. If you don’t write them down, the chances of your actually accomplishing them are pretty unlikely. In fact, it’s pretty close to zero.
According to a famous study of Harvard graduates, less than five percent of those who didn’t write down their goals actually accomplished them.
As I begin my 33rd year in the business, I know that, unless I start building and nurturing those relationships early in the year, they won’t be there at the end of the year. My most important customers are my current ones and I make sure they know it. But even with the best of care, customers move or fade away and need to be replaced.
So planning includes what I plan to do to attract new ones to maintain and continually grow my business.
And don’t rush this either. Take some time and actually think about what you want to accomplish next year. Make them specific — don’t just say “make more money.” Put a number in there — how much money do you want to make? Even better, write down how you plan to make more money — launch a new marketing tactic? Join a networking group? Optimize your website, etc.?
Then break down each goal into steps that are actually doable for you and indicate when you will be taking each step. Get your 2025 calendar out and put these dates on that calendar. This is probably the most important thing you can do to make sure you achieve those goals. It’s like taking a class. When you have assignments and a due date, you tend to get them done.
Don’t make this a big, difficult task. Have fun with it. You’re planning your year and you can turn it into anything you want it to be! This is exciting! Take time to enjoy the process.
This is your life and your business — you should be able to transform it into exactly what you want it to be.
As for me, this year when I grab that cup of coffee and create my strategy for the year, I plan to look more closely at what I really enjoy about the business and what I do “just because.” One of my goals will be to evaluate every aspect of the business, as well as all the other areas of my life, and decide what I want to continue and what parts I want to discontinue.
I am an idea person and have a tendency to try to put too many of those ideas into operation at one time. Some of them work and some don’t. I’m learning not to be afraid to let go of that great idea that just isn’t as successful as I had hoped.
A good example of this is that for years I operated a retail location – first in an antique store, then in a florist, in a party shop, and a bakery. I finally made the decision, a few years ago, to let that part of my business go and concentrate on the more profitable and less time consuming areas.
I did the same thing the past two years. In 2023, I realized that my husband — who was my local delivery person — had dementia which was gradually getting to the point that I didn’t dare let him drive unless I was with him to direct him where he should go. I didn’t want to spend my time doing that or delivering myself and also didn’t want to hire someone. So, I made the decision to let the local part of my business go.
And then iin 2024, another important decision was made. He had died in November and I was dealing with all the many, many things involved with that. The stress of that plus maintaining an active business making my own gift baskets was becoming unbearable so the decision was made to introduce a couple of dropship companies to help create those baskets.
I usually have a pretty good idea of how profitable the year was but good financial records are necessary to confirm it. If your accounting system is a disaster or non-existent, now is the time to get it in order. The tax season is much easier if your records are kept up to date throughout the year and you aren’t rushing around in late March trying to pull everything together.
If your accounting system consists of a shoebox full of receipts, you have no way of knowing if you are making a profit or digging yourself into a deep hole until it is too late to make needed changes.
Life has a funny way of throwing unexpected things at us and flexibility is essential. Sometimes even the goals themselves may change. Reaching a goal requires many little steps and isn’t accomplished on the day you finally attain it. Rather it’s accomplished with each increment along the way.
All too often, we reach the end of the year and think “I should have done a lot more marketing. Why didn’t I?” If this thought is spiraling through your head, be honest and answer that question. Why didn’t you do more marketing?
If the answer is that you didn’t have time or couldn’t think of enough ideas, now is the time to plan out your marketing strategy for the whole year and then implement it one tiny step at a time. Don’t plan to do too much all at once. You will only be overwhelmed and quit.
Decide what you want to do first.
It may be expanding to a new niche market, doing more cold calling, sending more direct mail, or really making that neglected website work for you.
Perhaps you’ve always wanted to write a newsletter but didn’t know where to begin. Now is the time to do the research, create the mailing list, and develop that first one. Decide if you want to send your newsletter via snail mail or email. Then start writing. It probably won’t be perfect, but just getting the first one out will give you the confidence to continue. As I said before, experience is the best teacher. Develop your own style, your own brand, and forget about what others are doing.
What about your inventory? Now that it is almost depleted (or it should be unless your holiday season was horrible), it is time to take a good long look at your buying practices.
Inventory is the largest investment in the asset column of your balance sheet. Therefore it is crucial to include inventory management in your plans for the coming year. Whether you are a retail store or an online one or both, you need to know how many items you are keeping on your shelves.
Think of inventory as dollars sitting idly in your stockroom. This should motivate you to make some decisions about what you are going to do about excess inventory. The longer products sit, the more it eats into profits and the less money you have to buy new products.
It helps to organize your inventory lists into different groups starting with your top-sellers all the way down to rarely sold items. And then keep the best sellers fully stocked but think of ways to decrease the number of rarely sold products.
Accounting. Marketing. Organizing. Regardless of which area, or areas, that your planning process indicates you are weak in, the first quarter of the year is the time to resolve to do something about it.
But resolve itself isn’t enough. Resolutions tend to be broken. Just ask all those regulars at the gym who know that the gym will be packed for a couple of months by resolution makers. But it’ll thin out by Valentine’s Day and by St. Patrick’s Day, the regulars will have it all to themselves again.
The time for a New Beginning is NOW!
Creating a plan that you know you can follow throughout the year will make you work smarter and not harder and will ensure success in 2022. But you will have to be careful or you will start that “mouse running on a wheel” process all over again and will soon be overwhelmed.