What do you think about when you think of 2021? Does the New Year fill you with excitement and anticipation? Hopefully, you are looking optimistically at what's coming up for you and your business and you're planning for your best year ever.
Look, 2020 was a very trying, difficult, year and much of what happened was contrary to what we were all expecting to happen. Personally, I was extremely excited for 2020 since I was starting a new job here in Silver City. This was going to be an epic new beginning for me as I was going to be working in a new city, alongside people who were new to me, and I was taking the helm of a strong chamber with a very cohesive community around it. January 6, 2020 was a very exciting day for me!
I started my New Year, with so much excitement and anticipation for the 2020 that I could hardly contain myself. 2020 was going to be a year of VISION! It was going to be a year of looking forward and seeing things more clearly than before. I realized within a couple of months that 2020 was going to be a game changer for business everywhere. In this case, "game changer" meant that we were going to be forced to leave 2020 behind and relearn all that we had learned about business. I knew that we needed to develop a new definition for success as a result of the COVID pandemic and the how it affected business.
My advice to you is that you have to go back to basics and start planning for 2021. Think of 2020 like you would any other year. Learn from your mistakes, accept what you could not change and capitalize on what went well. My advice to you is to plan a strategy for the New Year and take action! Don't worry about what could have happened if not for the global pandemic. Don't worry about what you couldn't accomplish because you were forced to curtail your business more drastically than you would have liked. Don't even worry about how much longer we are going to be struggling with all of this.
I'm not telling you to minimize the effects that COVID has had on Grant County and I'm certainly not telling you to forget about the precious lives we have lost during the past 9 months. COVID is real and it's pervasive and we must be ever vigilant about its effects. If "living with COVID" is going to become a way of life for us then we must be the resilient people that living in the greatest republic on the planet says we are. We must take the circumstances we are living in and succeed anyway!
Starting today, my challenge to you is to set up three to five business goals for yourself and plan to exceed them in 2021. Develop 5 SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Action oriented, Realistic and Time sensitive) that you can focus on in January. What would you like to do in 2021 that you didn't get to do in 2020? I will help you do it!
The success of your business in 2021 is up to you. While we will still be in the throes of the global pandemic, I'm pretty comfortable saying that it can't get any worse next year. Focus on the things that will enhance your passion and joie de vivre for life and go after them.
In 2021 I plan to meet you face to face! I plan to help your business succeed by helping you create plans and projects that increase your bottom line. In the next year I plan to help enhance the economic prosperity in Grant County by helping 20 new businesses get started. Ask me how! In the New Year I plan to help 20 to 30 existing businesses re-start and revamp their business success plan.
We are all in this together and when local business succeeds then we all succeed. It will take time and a great deal of effort but when we all work together, we make things happen. Are you with me?