31 Dec Twas the night before New Year’s

Hmm.  Changed that up, didn’t I??

A new year brings new hope…for things to be different, somehow better. But Einstein’s definition of insanity was doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. So for things to be different…and better…things need to change.

This time of the year, when my personal life gets busy and my business slows, I use the time to get my business in order. I’m back to writing (it’s been a very busy 4Q) and creating new workshops for 2014. I’m revisiting what worked in 2013 and what worked less well. I’m trying to anticipate the storms of 2014 and figure out where I should best spend my marketing and networking time. All my time, really.  Identifying  those activities that get me closer to my goals, that feed my bottom line. I could go on and on and on. It’s all the stuff that doesn’t happen when I am busy working. All the stuff that is going to require doing something differently next year.

For many of us, the business of the business is something that we don’t focus on enough. As subject matter experts, we weren’t taught how to run a business…marketing, sales, operations, finance, HR, management, etc. Those are skills we get to pick up on the way. New Year’s is time for an honest assessment. We may have done well, but we don’t actually know how much better we could have done had we invested a little something here or there, brought in someone with a skill set we weren’t schooled in, reorganized our marketing or sales into something better or more efficient.

I know. Change isn’t easy. It’s risky…what if it doesn’t work? It’s scary…what if I don’t know how to do this? What if I fail? Well Einstein had another quote for that. He said “You never fail until you stop trying.”

If you take the long view of your life, maybe you will come to the same realization I came to when I take the long view of my life. That change is ALWAYS good. It just feels like hell when you are going through it.

And I heard her exclaim, ‘ere she drove out of sight,
“Happy New Year to all, and to all a good-night!”

Here’s to great changes in 2014.