How To Set a New Direction in 2024
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How To Set a New Direction in 2024

How To Set a New Direction in 2024

The start of a new year is a good time to assess where you’ve been and where you want to go. Otherwise, it can be just the same problems on a different day.

Most of us are good at seeing what we didn’t accomplish. Many throw up their hands and say, “Good riddance.” But could you take stock of what went right instead?

To do better in your business, you must take responsibility for driving your success, not sit in the passenger seat watching it all go past.

You can’t just hope a perfectly trained employee who can work any hours and weekends while being passionate about helping customers, thirsty for knowledge, and willing to work for peanuts will walk through the door. That is not going to happen.

You have to make them. You’ll have to create crews who can interact with a wary public, gain their trust, and be great employees. It is the time of being more human at an increasingly inhuman time.

There is no magic to this. It’s called being brilliant on the basics.

Are you still in chaos mode? You know, “I don’t have time blah, blah, blah,” or “I’m just so busy blah, blah, blah,” or “I can’t find good help blah, blah, blah”?

All those are excuses to stay stuck.

Only you can stop it.

To set a new direction for 2024:

Take responsibility for your actions. Change your “I’m so busy” excuse into “I haven’t made time for that.” Change your “I don’t have time for that” into “I haven’t chosen to make time for that.”

Be honest.

It is a subtle difference, but it is one that, when you practice it, always reminds you that this is a choice you are making or not making. Otherwise, you’re lost in the chaos. And chaos mode doesn’t scale.

Take, for example, the person who says they can’t hire someone to do their bookkeeping. How much would that cost them? Let’s say it’s $30 an hour. Essentially, they’ve just told me that their family, sanity, and role as a business leader are not worth $30 for each of those hours.

To change your mindset, start with the perspective, “Could I hire someone else to do this to spend more time with my family?” How much is your family worth? How much is time doing what you want worth? You have to use your “choice muscle.”

Here is an excerpt from one of my live videos on how to bury the past and set a new direction. See it here (scroll down)—but watch out for the 🔥 :)

Every retailer I’ve spoken with this year wants to grow. But, as with all of us, considering doing the work creates fear and procrastination.

Don’t confuse procrastination with laziness. It’s not that you don’t want to work. It’s just that you don’t want to encounter those feelings of self-doubt, confusion, or frustration as you try new things. You might fail, and that possibility feels worse than looking forward to success.

Here’s the thing…

The brain learns by trial and error. You’re supposed to meet road bumps and have to figure things out.

The work you’re avoiding isn’t because it is something you hate, but really just something you fear. And the work that needs to be done is often what’s in your best interest. So instead of looking for someone to pull you out of the river, you need to get upstream and find out why you’re falling in to begin with.

There are two kinds of stores, two kinds of managers, and two kinds of retail companies: the ones that will make it and those that will not. It’s really the difference between people who take responsibility for their actions and how that plays out in their business and those who shirk that responsibility and blame others.

But no one else is responsible for you having a clean store. An engaging shopping experience. Or enough help. Amazon and the rest are not going away; the only certainty is that it is up to you.

A lot of retailers had great holidays. But don’t pat yourself on the back for too long if you did because the holiday demands are over.

What should you be looking at right now in terms of retail management? What strategies will keep you growing and learning?

Ultimately, we can only focus on the future, not the past.

One thing I’ve used for starting each day is a daily meditation. I particularly like Deepak Chopra’s Getting Unstuck: Creating a Limitless Life.

Be open to new things.

And with a smile on your face and a positive direction in your heart, be willing to set a new direction for 2024.

Past fear.

Past procrastination.

Bob Phibbs, “The Retail Doctor,” is a 30-plus-year retail expert with a proven track record to help brands lift sales, turn their retail staff into real salespeople, and get more out of their store traffic with innovative retail marketing tactics. Contact him at 562-260-2266, or visit his website to learn more.

Published: January 29th, 2024

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