Do you know when your business’ birthday is?
Mine’s today. And yes, I’m taking the day to celebrate.
Why not?
Getting through any year in business is worth a moment’s celebration. Getting through this year with all its craziness is worth more than just a moment.
And also because not everyone made it. I don’t mean that we’re here to gloat at our fortune and their misfortune. Let’s face it, this year, it could have been any of us in that situation. So we’re privileged to get to the end of another year.
It’s more fun than an appraisal
In my corporate life, there were really no more dreaded words than “annual review”. Possibly followed by all the rubbish about normal distributions, forced rankings and everything else.
Very rarely did it feel like a valuable exercise.
So another year of not going through that is worth celebrating
But it is worth doing an appraisal
The useful parts of the review are looking at what had worked and what could have gone better. For all of us, we’ve probably done things for the first time this year, some of which we’ll keep doing.
I’ve done webinars for the first time, thanks to the Food & Drink Forum. I’m three in with one more to go in the autumn. I hope I might do some more next year.
And I think we all know what could have gone better. We’ll live in hope never to live through another period like the last 5 months.
It’s a chance to say thank you
None of our businesses exists in isolation. There are many people we wouldn’t get through the week without, let alone the whole year.
So, before I blow the candles out on this year’s cake, I just wanted to say thank you to my clients from the past year. To these teams and owners, thank you for your trust, and for your enthusiasm:
There are quite a few others I’d love to say thank you to publicly, but they’re shrouded in secrecy still! I love working with businesses at the early stage of launch, or relaunch in many cases. But, mum’s the word for now!
I never take a year for granted, and particularly not this year. I’m going to enjoy celebrating, and then cracking on as there’s lots on.
Whenever your business birthday is, I hope you take at least a moment to reflect and celebrate. If you’ve ever gone bigger than just a cup of tea on celebrating then I’d love to hear about it!
