Ideas are easy. Implementation is the tough part. It’s why top sports marketer Jon Spoelstra argues so fervently for appointing an “idea champion” to pursue the fruit of your brainstorming sessions. “Ideas and projects can get away from you, but if you make someone the idea champion, they’ll passionately breathe life into the idea,” he says in his book Outrageous Marketing. The person doesn’t even need to have expertise in the field — just a belief in the idea’s potential and the support to pursue it.

SELF-MANAGEMENTCome to Terms With 2024

Regret is a common emotion as one year ends and another begins. Karen Ogden of Envest Asset Management says it’s crucial not to dwell on feelings that arise from decisions you wish you hadn’t made and now can’t reverse. “It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback and say, ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’” she told Bloomberg News. “But it’s wasted time.” Instead, Ogden recommends finding lessons learned and taking solace in positive developments. For instance, in her field, higher interest rates mean savings may have gone up at least a little, she says.

SALESChange Your Shoes

Do you unconsciously assume that your customers have your financial limitations? Do you secretly believe that they should do what you would do? If so, these are likely the reasons you struggle as a salesperson, writes Roy H. Willimas in his MondayMorningMemo. “You believe you are being empathetic, but you are not. You aren’t putting yourself into their shoes; you’re putting them into yours,” and that’s limiting what you can achieve in sales.

MARKETINGPair With an Upmarket Rival

Many successful businesses follow a curve in which they pursue ever-more lucrative customers as they become more established. This makes sense. The best customers are usually at the high end, and it pays to develop a business model that responds to their needs. But it also means other customers get left behind. If you have a more upmarket competitor in your area, why not offer to buy the names of its “inactive” customers? This could give you access to customer lists that were built up over decades for basically nothing, marketing consultant Jay Abraham says.

MARKETINGGet on the Map

Google Maps regularly updates its “satellite views” of urban areas in North America, although it rarely publicizes the schedule for its flyovers (the images are actually a patchwork of mainly aerial photos). In this age of mass access to intelligence data, your rooftop is a billboard. What does your roof say about your business? How about: “PETS LOVE US!” in 6-foot lettering.

SELF-GROWTHMake Better Resolutions

Americans’ No. 1 New Year’s resolution — “I’m going to lose weight” — illustrates what’s wrong with most people’s vows to improve some aspect of their lives: It’s too vague and too all-encompassing. According to Lifehacker, a better resolution would be, “I’m going to lose 5 pounds by going to the gym at least twice a week.” So if your resolution for 2025 is to be a “better boss,” you’ve got work to do.

HIRINGFind Former Corporate Talent

If you’re trying to keep payroll expenses down but are still in need of high-quality staff, here’s an AllBusiness.com strategy: Look for smart women or men who’ve left corporate life for a better work-life balance. They can make excellent part-time specialists, especially in areas such as technology and marketing.

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As you plan your email marketing for the final month of 2024, be sure to include “time for reading,” says digital marketing veteran Chris Marriott. And the material he has in mind are your competitors’ ads. “Email in particular gives retailers a great opportunity for a rapid response to a competitor’s challenge. For instance, if a competitor promotes a deal that your brand can beat, a quick email might interest consumers,” he says. So be sure to ask the big-box and e-commerce chains to keep you in the loop.

COMMUNICATION
Pick Up the Phone

In almost no time at all, the phone call seems to have become the technological equivalent of an intrusive, unexpected knock at the door. But while texting gives you more control over your time, there are still instances when it is still far better to pick up the phone and dial. “It’s a much more efficient way to communicate,” says Catherine Blyth, author of On Time: Finding Your Pace in a World Addicted to Fast. It goes double for situations when communicating emotions, such as if an upset customer has reached out: “When in doubt, pick up the phone. If the emotion is complex, be in doubt,” she says.

BRAINSTORMING
Write Down Your Ideas

Don’t think you have great ideas? Tiago Forte, author of Building A Second Brain, recommends a 30-day test. “For 30 days, once or twice a day, when you have an insight or idea, write it down in a digital notes app. At the end of 30 days, open it up and look at this treasure trove of knowledge and try and tell me that some of the total collected information is not going to be valuable for all your future projects and goals,” he said on Dan Pink’s podcast.

SAFETY
First Aid Primer

In a recent Tested Q&A with Adam Savage, the Mythbusters star offered several tips on first aid: Always make sure your first-aid supplies are close at hand, organized so that you know where everything is without thinking about it, and that you can grab what you need with one hand (should you be bleeding with the other). So, if your one first aid kit is a zippered case stored in the back-room kitchen, you’ve got some reorganizing to do or additional kits to buy.

COMMUNICATION
Help Long Emails Go Down

Writing a long email? Break it into two parts, leadership expert Erica Dhawan says. “Start with a quick summary at the top and then go into the details.” It helps people greatly digest the message, she writes in Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust & Connection, No Matter the Distance.

PROBLEM-SOLVING
What Could You Do?

Faced with a problem and not sure what to do? Instead of asking yourself “What should I do?” ask “What could I do?” According to a study by researchers at Harvard Business School, the “could” question widens the possibilities, generating more and better potential solutions, whereas “should” tends to limit the possibilities to what comes to mind first and what has been tried before.

MANAGEMENT
2025 … Bring It On!

2025 draws closer and with it the tantalizing thought of what you might be able to achieve. The consultants at McKinsey recommend setting an “aspirational goal” and an “acceptable result.” An ambitious goal raises your odds of success. But it also boosts your odds of feeling like a failure. In contrast, if you fall short of the aspirational goal but deliver the acceptable result, you haven’t failed. The other advantage of an aspirational target is that it tells everyone on your team that “we are open to doing things differently,” the report says.

PRODUCTIVITY
Put It in a 9-By-5 Box

Procrastinating on a task? Forget about completing it: Put it in a time box of 45 minutes instead, Luciano Passuello writes on litemind.com. “You overcome your resistance towards the task, and chances are that when the time is up you’ll have built enough momentum to continue working on it much longer.” Passuello adds a neat trick: His computer emits the sound of a round of applause when he reaches the allotted time.

OPERATIONS
Team Reading

You can’t spend too much time or effort on “hiring smart” (the alternative is to manage tough, which is much more time consuming). But here’s a strategy to speed up the process: Read résumés in teams if possible. Teams of three to five people who work well together are more accurate and insightful about potential employees than individuals are, says Dr. Pierre Mornell, author of 45 Effective Ways for Hiring Smart!

INSPIRATION
Get in the Ring

Waiting for just the right opportunity? Or until you’re ready? You may be waiting forever. That was among the key takeaways from Wharton professor Adam Grant’s latest book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. “Put yourself in the ring before you feel ready. You don’t need to build confidence before you take the leap — your confidence grows through taking the leap,” he writes.

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‘Tis the time to show discipline. The holiday season lures with the hope of boundless sales, but you should buy only what you think you’ll need, advises Julie Johannes of Happy Hounds Pet Supply in Bigfork, MT. “We all get excited about the sales that come our way for the holiday season, and I used to overbuy just to reach order minimums or free shipping requirements. Now I look at what I need and how much, and if a company isn’t offering a deal within those parameters, I skip it.” Johannes adds that this applies just as much in the post-holiday period, when manufacturers try to sell off what remains to make room for their new products. “Follow their lead and sell off your own older stuff rather than buying more of the old.”

HOLIDAY TIP #2Embrace the Power of Pumpkin

Another strategy to deal with the problem of excess holiday inventory is to bring in products that can do double duty, advises Robert Gerrity of Petworks in St. Petersburg, FL. “We’ve found that a couple of pumpkin-themed/flavored treats on the holiday display sell just as well as the holiday-themed treats. This can be extended to anything that sounds like traditional holiday foods or items, such as turkey, cranberry, pie, etc.,” he says, adding that those items are also “more available to order during the holidays if we run out.”

HOLIDAY TIP #3Opt For the Extra Body

Getting the balance right with holiday staffing is another tough area. Jennifer Baker of Grateful Dog Bakery in North Ridgeville, OH, argues that given the downside it’s better to err on the side of having too many staff members than too few. “Adequate staffing is key to avoiding stress and burnout. I would rather have an extra person dusting than one person getting hammered.”

SALESCuriosity Is Key

Probably no piece of sales advice is repeated more often than “listen more.” But what’s often omitted is exactly what the salesperson should be listening for: Product specs? Willingness to spend? Opportunities to praise the customer? Jim Lattin, a marketing professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says the answer is threefold: You need to learn what is important to the customer; what is negative about his or her current situation; and what she thinks might constitute an ideal solution. “With this information, we can create a stark contrast between the customer’s current situation and their ideal. And then map our product onto the customer’s ideal solution,” he says. But what usually happens is salespeople just make assumptions without exploring the hints provided by the customer and never allowing themselves to find this sweet spot. “Learning to be authentically curious is thus critical for effective selling,” Lattin says.

SALESLive in a Fantasy World

Encourage your staff (and even yourself) to loosen their grip on reality, argue marketers Rich Baker and Gary Levitt in a column at MarketingProfs. The result could be truly exceptional service. Ask them to imagine that each customer is someone who would automatically merit preferential treatment — the store’s founder in disguise, for example, or their mother. “With this sort of fantasy in mind, their service should be nothing short of fantastic,” they write.

MANAGEMENTStop Asking For Feedback. Start Asking For Advice

Feedback, we’ve been told, is a gift, be it negative or positive. How do you improve, after all, if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong? But what if that thinking is wrong? Recent research from a Harvard Business School study found that a better approach was to seek advice. The reason is threefold: First people love giving advice — it makes them feel valued. Two, they don’t love giving negative feedback — it makes them uncomfortable to tell you where you messed up. And three, feedback tends to look back and is often not “actionable,” whereas advice can be. It’s important when seeking advice to ask for specifics (“Where exactly can we improve our online channel?”) and to ask someone who has the appropriate experience to actually help.

MANAGEMENTExtend Credit

What’s the best way to utterly destroy an employee’s effectiveness at work? Stop them from getting things done. And what kind of idiotic boss would do that? Oh, the kind who takes credit for an underling’s work, needlessly interferes or disrupts an employee’s progress on a job, sets conflicting goals, or restricts their autonomy. All told, it’s about one in three bosses, say Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, authors of The Progress Principle, who spent 15 years studying the diaries of workers and their bosses. “People want to make a valuable contribution, and feel great when they make progress toward doing so,” they say.

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There’s something in the phrase “showing up” that seems to demand grit and buckling down. But it doesn’t have to be that way, James Clear, author of the bestseller Atomic Habits, says. “One of the things I recommend in the book is called the two-minute rule,” he told podcaster Tim Ferriss recently. “And it says, just take whatever habit you’re trying to build and scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So ‘Read 30 books a year’ becomes ‘Read one page’ or ‘Meditate five days a week for 30 minutes’ becomes ‘Meditate for 60 seconds.’ You’re just trying to master the art of showing up,” he says. “A habit must be established before it can be improved. It’s got to become the standard before you worry about optimizing it into some perfect thing. So, make it easy to do.”

CUSTOMER SERVICEThree Powerful Words: Tell Me More

When a customer shows up with a problem or grievance, the typical human instinct is to respond immediately with a solution, explanation or a justification. But a better approach, Amanda Ripley, author of High Conflict, says is to utter three words: “Tell me more.” Not only does that give you more information about the situation, but it shows you’re listening to their problem. And often that’s all they want: to be heard. And when people feel heard, the anger and resentment often can dissipate. Or even better, in talking through the problem, people come to a solution on their own.

TRADE SHOWSKeep It in Sight

Traveling to SUPERZOO? Keep all your things visible in a hotel room, not in drawers, and all gathered into one spot. “That way you’ll never leave anything behind,” Kevin Kelly writes in his excellent little book, Excellent Advice For Living. “If you need to have something like a charger off to the side, place a couple of other large items next to it because you are less likely to leave three items behind than just one.”

TECHNOLOGYLet ChatGPT Get to Know You Better

ChatGPT is amazing — and flaky. This is partly because it’s like Drew Barrymore’s character in 50 First Dates: It has to learn who you are over and over again. To improve its output, let it know you and your preferences better by using the tool’s “Custom Instructions” setting. Dan Shipper at every.to has a useful explainer on how to enhance these settings in just a few minutes. Once set up, you won’t ever have to explain “anything twice because it will already know enough context about you to help — and it will do so in ways that surprise and delight you,” he says.

CHOICESFundamental Beats Instrumental

Make decisions for fundamental reasons (take a course or join a club because it sounds interesting) rather than for instrumental reasons (because of how that course or club will look on your resume). Why? It’s much more fun. And it’s also smarter. Instrumental reasons rarely work! “Lots of evidence suggests that people powered by intrinsic motives achieve the most,” business author Dan Pink writes in a recent Pinkcast newsletter.

SALESUnlock Your Sales Associate’s Superstar Potential

When you have someone on staff who is a natural salesperson, put away the rule book and stash the scripts, marketers Rich Baker and Gary Levitt say in a column at MarketingProfs. “Encourage creativity, boldness and authenticity. Tell them you have made a choice to embrace the soft science of human interaction over the hard science of metrics — come hell or high water,” they write. “With this lofty mindset in place, every customer interaction will be a slam-dunk and crackle with the intangibles you need to transform customers into loyal friends.”

EMAILIt’s All About the Subject Line

The more you think about it, the more it makes sense: Spend as much time crafting the subject line of an email as the message itself because the subject line is usually the only thing most people read. That means being descriptive of the contents rather than clever, keeping it short, provoking people’s curiosity and — seeing as you’re going to be investing the time — doing some A/B testing, ChimpMail recommends.

MANAGEMENTDial It Back a Bit

It takes both a special mind-set and certain skills to build a successful company. But left unchecked, the very things that helped make your business a winner can depress your employees and actually harm your business. That is the message from a Fortune Small Business interview with Marshall Goldsmith, author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful. At the top of the list is being too competitive. “Your desire to prove yourself right can come at your employees’ expense, and as a result, good people feel humiliated and eventually leave,” Goldsmith explains.

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The best poker players and the most successful business owners have something in common: They know when to fold. In her book Quit, former pro player Annie Duke notes that in Texas Hold ‘em, the pros play fewer than 25% of their hands. Amateurs play more than 50%. Similarly, retailers who are quickest to cut their losses on bad buys and ill-fated new ventures do the best. Duke’s core argument is that we should all fold more. We spend too much time on too many pursuits that are no longer worthwhile to avoid feeling like we have failed. But in poker, and in business, that’s a good way to go broke. “Success does not lie in sticking to things,” Duke writes. “It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.”

OPERATIONSBack Up Like a Pro

In most things in life, good enough is just fine. But that’s not the case when it comes to backing up your files. “Be a pro when it comes to storing and saving your data. Back up your backup,” says Kevin Kelly in his excellent little book, Excellent Advice for Living. Kelly recommends you have at least one physical backup and one backup in the cloud. And if you really want peace of mind, keep more than one of each. “How much would you pay to retrieve all your data, photos, notes if you lost them? Backups are cheap compared to regrets,” he says.

PRODUCTIVITYGet Unstuck

Feeling stuck is surprisingly common, whether we hit roadblocks at work or in our relationships or creative or athletic plateaus. To get unstuck, says NYU marketing professor Adam Alter, author of Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most, spend a few minutes “pouring out” your bad ideas by writing, drawing or otherwise generating content that’s actively “bad.” That can nudge you beyond the inertia that comes from inaction, and free mental space for more valuable insights to follow, he says.

MANAGEMENTCapitalize on Spring Fever

Thanks to the warmer temps, your employees are generally in a good mood, but somewhat distracted. And with the improving weather, absenteeism suddenly seems on the rise. Instead of dreading the seasonal slacking, take advantage of it. Channel that wistfulness into idea generation. Pick your slowest day of the week and call a two-hour brainstorming session at a local green spot for half your staff. Just make sure you have a loose agenda of sorts. You may well be amazed by the flow of good ideas unleashed by unlocked minds. Then repeat with the other half on the next slow day.

PSYCHOLOGYShare the Self-Love

Spring is the season of love. And not just for animals. It’s also the perfect time for a reminder on the importance of sharing the love — with yourself: “The biggest life hack is to become your own best friend. Everything is easier when you do,” says mindfulness teacher Cory Mascara. Keep this in mind for the remainder of the season.

MAINTENANCEBring in a New Set of Eyes

When it comes to spring cleaning, it can help to bring in a set of fresh eyes, says Jennifer Larsen, owner of Firehouse Pet Shop in Wenatchee, WA. “Get a person who normally doesn’t look at the details of your building to point out all the chipped paint, dinged corners, crud built up around edges, etc.” It’s amazing how habituation basically makes us blind to those little blights that can diminish the overall appeal of a business setting.

HIRINGLook For Storytellers

Storytelling is a powerful but underappreciated sales skill, helping you connect with your customers emotionally and encouraging them to lower the guard that comes up when confronted with “facts.” To ensure he’s hiring storytellers, Jeremy Zimmer, CEO of United Talent Agency, tests his potential hires by asking them to share a story. “If we’re selling something, we have to be able to communicate it in an elegant, intelligent way,” he told Business Insider.

ONLINEGo Rogue on Social Media

It sounds obvious, but the quality of your ideas and creative thoughts has a direct correlation to the information you’re exposed to, so choose your inputs carefully — nowhere more so than from social media. In this area, it helps to be both purposeful and random. Spend what may feel is an inordinate amount of time curating your favorite platform feed — it can be an amazing resource when used well, and a terrible, potentially divisive distraction when not. Also throw in some random searches on Google occasionally to prevent its algorithms from stereotyping you and choking off your access to the wilder ideas out there.

MOTIVATIONWake Up Smiling

Put a smile on your face the moment you wake up. “It tricks the brain into thinking: ‘Ooh, I feel quite good about today!’ It’s such a simple thing, and it really works,” says Gaby Roslin, TV and radio presenter and author of Spread The Joy.

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In his book Hidden Potential, Wharton business professor Adam Grant offers a contrarian view of job interviews: Design the process to make candidates feel relaxed and to give them the maximum opportunity to demonstrate their strengths rather than reveal weaknesses. “And at the end, ask them if they felt they showed their potential and offer a do-over if not,” he writes.

MANAGEMENTExploration VS Exploitation

At a restaurant, do you order what you know is great? Or do you try something new? At work, do you keep using the same marketing channels? Or try something new? According to technology writer Kevin Kelley, the optimal balance for exploring new things versus exploiting them once found is: 1:3. Spend one third of your time on exploring and two thirds on deepening. “It is harder to devote time to exploring as you age because it seems unproductive, but aim for 1:3,” he says.

FINANCESInvest in Preparedness

Fortunes are difficult to make and surprisingly easy to lose. It’s why the more money you amass, the more time you must devote to protecting it. In his book, Same As Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, venture capitalist Morgan Housel urges his readers to think of risk the way California thinks of earthquakes. “California knows a major earthquake will happen. But it has no idea when, where or of what magnitude. Emergency crews are prepared despite no specific forecast. Buildings are designed to withstand earthquakes that may not occur for a century or more. As Nassim Taleb says, ‘Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.”

FEEDBACKThree-Star Reviews Are Sometimes the Best

Everyone loves a five-star review, but sometimes the three-star reviews are more helpful, says podcast host Tim Ferriss, explaining that perfect reviews don’t offer much useful information while one-star reviews are often the result of something out of your control, a one-off error, or a crank who can’t be satisfied. “But with three-star reviews, or the most critical three-star reviews, you tend to get a lot of really helpful feedback,” he notes.

MOTIVATIONEmbrace the Cringe

Do you feel a slight twinge of embarrassment when you look at some of the displays you created or even the business decisions you made five, 10 or 20 years ago? Embrace it, says James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. Speaking on a podcast he said, “A good indicator of progress is the feeling of slight embarrassment by the quality of your earlier work,” he says.

MANAGEMENTBe Remembered

Speak first, last or both in meetings. Research shows that it’s not just how you say something, but when you say it that matters. We remember things best if they come at the beginning or end of a list, a presentation or even a trip to the mountains. What gets stuck in the middle often gets forgotten, says Dan Pink, author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

GETTING READYGo Henry Ford with Your Sock Drawer

If getting dressed in the morning takes an inordinate amount of time, replace all of your socks with identical black pairs. “It’s a tip I found in a book on ADHD, and it’s made getting ready in the mornings much easier. It’s definitely helped with my decision fatigue,” beauty and lifestyle writer Anita Bhagwandas shares.

WORK-LIFE BALANCEStop and Smell the Soap

Everyone needs a way to wind down from work, especially at the end of the work week. Here’s a neat one from a list of “100 Tiny Changes to Transform Your Life” that ran in The Guardian newspaper recently: Use a soap that reminds you of a fun vacation. “I use a soap I brought home from Yucatán in Mexico. The smell shifts my mind from work mode to relaxation, with fond memories of the jungle,” related a reader from Colorado.

OPERATIONSRun Better Meetings

One of the best way to improve meetings is to get everyone on the same page, literally. Before your scheduled get-together, write up a Google Doc or even an email for participants to read ahead of time. According to syndicated columnist Marcel Schwantes, this sets the agenda, gets brains thinking about what is to be discussed and “creates a sort of “team” feeling among co-workers that allows you to get to critical thinking faster.”

SALESGet Smart

When precipitation hammers much of the country, it issues an ultimatum to retailers: Shut up or get smart. Marketing website ClickZ.com cited the case of two businesses that did the latter. The first was a restaurant that emailed its regulars with an offer of a 2% discount for every inch of snow that fell if they would brave the weather to come in for a meal. The second was Road Runner Sports, which apologized for its local stores being closed and offered customers a discount on online purchases.

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To be sure, there’s nothing quite as nice as that first spring morning to enjoy and explore the glory of the outdoors – or to just take a walk around the block. But according to recent studies, there are benefits to be had from heading outdoors even when it’s not so balmy. A brisk walk in the cold, it turns out, is akin to taking a bracing cold shower in that it raises alertness and stimulates thinking, according to INC magazine.

CUSTOMER SERVICEAnswer That Phone

Once your business gets big enough, you hire others to answer the phone. That’s great for efficiency, but it also adds a layer between you and your customers. And it’s not just you — it’s everyone who no longer answers the phone, from your managers to your groomers to your day-care attendants. But there’s real benefit in maintaining that contact, marketer and business author Seth Godin says, arguing that everyone in your business should spend time every month working the customer service line and answering questions. On top of learning about what people are searching for or unhappy about, you establish a human connection.

BRAINSTORMINGLet It Happen Naturally

It’s a new year, so time to come up with big ideas. The key is to not force yourself, OpenAI boss Sam Altman says in his playbook for founders. Instead, he recommends getting into the habit of noticing problems (faced by your customers) and following what interests you. “At some point, ideas will naturally emerge,” he says, adding that you should aim for simplicity in your ventures. “Complex ideas are almost always a sign of a made-up problem.”

WORK-LIFE BALANCEPay Now, Enjoy Later

To get the most out of yourself in 2024, you need breaks. And to get the most out of your breaks, book them way in advance, like this week! You’ll enjoy it more because of the distance between the pain of paying and the actual experience of the vacation, and you won’t spend all of your time thinking, “Am I getting my money’s worth?” Make it all-inclusive, and it will just be a nice relaxing break, behavioral economist Dan Ariely writes in Dollars and Sense.

OPERATIONSPut That Meeting on Hold

Feeling like your meetings aren’t that productive? According to a recent Harvard Business School survey, two-thirds of managers don’t think they are, so why not hold a moratorium for a week or month or however long and look for alternative ways to disseminate information. Make a note for when things aren’t being communicated well and then reintroduce meetings for those instances.

PRODUCTIVITYStory-Worthy Moments

Each day, write down the most “story-worthy” thing that happened. It improves your memory, helps you feel grateful and gives you more stories to share, productivity blogger Colby Kultgen says.

TIME MANAGEMENTMake It a Rule

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, never says yes to anything immediately. According to the Brain Food Newsletter, people-pleasing had him making too many commitments, so now he says something to the effect of: “Thanks for the invite. I don’t say yes to anything on the spot, but I’ll let you know if I’m interested.” Turning the choice into a rule lowers the pain of rejection for others and makes the decision easy for you.

SALESNow, There’s Gratitude

What’s better? A grateful customer or a loyal customer? A paper in Journal Marketing argues the former. It says customers made to feel gratitude become enduringly loyal and as a result, increase their purchases. In contrast, loyalty or rewards programs rarely inspire gratitude. Points are seen as something customers earn. So what’s the psychology behind it? Humans get pleasure out of reciprocating good deeds, and guilt when they don’t. What unexpected gifts or services can you surprise your customers with?

PRODUCTIVITYTake Care of the Small Items with Forced Focus

Does the endless flow of small items that need attending sink your day? Try embracing them. “Here are the rules: All work must be done in blocks of at least 30 minutes,” Cal Newport writes, explaining his method for attaining what he calls “forced focus.” You’re free to abandon your most important work whenever you like, in favor of emails, minor errands and the like, but with a caveat: If you switch, you must stick to such “small stuff” for 30 minutes. The double benefit is that you “batch” your smaller tasks, clearing the decks more speedily, while creating a disincentive for getting distracted from the major ones.

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Consume content at 1.5 times speed. “Studies show that retention rate doesn’t start to drop until around 2X speed,” productivity blogger Colby Kultgen says. “It takes about five minutes to get used to, and then you’ll never want to go back.” This doesn’t apply just to reading. In fact, it’s probably best for listening to podcasts and audiobooks — you’ll get through a lot more useful, inspiring or just fun material.

FINANCESDon’t Sweat The Small Bills

If you’re prone to overthinking spending decisions, apply this rule of thumb: The only three digits of your net worth that matter are the left three, so if you have $3,649,855, the $9,855 doesn’t really move the needle. Which means you can spend anything to the right (i.e. up to $9,999) without thinking too much. Of course, this is a general conceptual rule — spend 10k on dinner every night for a few months and soon those three digits to the left will be two. The bigger point, says Khe Hy, a former Wall Street banker who now runs a productivity startup, is that where your attention goes, your energy goes. It helps to be aware when you’re sweating the small stuff.

OPERATIONSRun Better Meetings

One of the best ways to improve meetings is to get everyone on the same page, literally. Before your scheduled get-together, write up a Google Doc, or even an email will do, for participants to read. According to INC contributor Marcel Schwantes, this sets the agenda, gets brains thinking about what is to be discussed, and “creates a sort of ‘team’ feeling among co-workers that allows you to get to critical thinking faster.”

COMMUNICATIONSSecure Your Email

It’s hard to overestimate the impact of email, but so much of its power goes under-utilized because, simply put, no one tells us! Here’s one for Gmail you should know: Confidential Mode for sensitive emails. It allows you to set a message expiration date, revoke message access at any time, and require a verification code (sent by text), to open a message. Got a message you don’t want shared? Simply locate the “padlock” icon at the bottom of your message (to the right of the “Send” button), choose your options and you’re set to go.

PRODUCTIVITYLeave A Little In The Locker Room

As a pep talk staple, “Go out there and give it 110%!” makes intuitive sense. More effort should lead to greater success. Only it doesn’t. In a wide number of fields, from Olympic sprinting to academic learning to your pet business, demanding the optimal invariably leads to burnout, discouragement, and poorer results over the long haul. It’s the rationale behind the 85% rule, which recommends aiming for a sweet spot just short of maximum effort to achieve high performance. In an article in Harvard Business Review, business author Greg McKeown suggests implementing the 85% rule specifically by setting a done-for-the-day time, explicitly telling employees to aim for 85% effort, and watching out for unnecessarily high-pressure language like “ASAP” in communications. Yep, he’s saying you should leave a little in the locker room.

MOTIVATIONGet Some Perspective

When times get busy and the tasks pile up, it’s easy for your staff — and for yourself — to focus on the stress or drudgery. Try instead to encourage a mindset fixed on the big picture and the help you’re providing to your customers (and their pets), Dan Ariely writes in Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations. “When we reframe experience so that we focus on the meaning, so that we see how it helps others, dull activities can give us purpose and even be inspiring,” Ariely says. To be sure, the work won’t change, but your perspective can. Keep reminding your people that during your team meetings.

NETWORKINGDesignate Yourself

It’s party season, which means it’s networking season. A good way to take full advantage of the opportunities to mingle and meet potential customers is to be the designated driver. (Rideshares get pricey on NYE!) This removes a huge headache for partygoers and ensures you’ll get many invites, networking guru Keith Ferrazzi, co-author of Never Eat Alone, says.

MANAGEMENTDon’t Cut Muscle

Unless an economic downturn threatens your company’s existence, do not cut back on strategic initiatives, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton write in the Harvard Business Review. These initiatives will give you the competitive advantage for the long haul. “Attempts to cut fat and waste often slice into newly growing muscle, bone and tendon,” the authors write.

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Marketers have long turned to young people to help them navigate new tech. TikTok is no different. But according to a story in the New York Times, it helps to cut them a lot of creative slack, and even allow these youngsters to become the face of your brand if you’re not comfortable with the app, given its often confusing mix of song clips and unique vernacular. “The best way to do it is just to hire college interns,” the report quotes one small business owner as saying.

MANAGEMENTKeep the Lines Open

Once your business gets big enough, you hire someone to answer the phones. That’s great for efficiency, but it also adds a layer between you and your customers. And it’s not just you — it’s managers and anyone else who no longer answers phones. But there’s a real benefit in maintaining that contact, marketer and business author Seth Godin says, explaining that everyone on staff should spend time each month working the customer service line and answering questions. On top of learning about what people are searching for or are unhappy about, you establish a human connection to them.

GROWTHNo Regrets

How to reframe a bad decision? You were given incomplete information. The future was unknowable. What is there to regret? And if you can view such “mistakes” as chances to learn and grow or teach, you’ll be even better off, Dan Pink says in his latest book, The Power Of Regret.

WORKFLOWGet Unstuck

If you’re procrastinating on a project, it’s often because you don’t know the next appropriate action. In such cases, it can help to ask yourself what it is that you need to find out, decide or do. “Usually the roadblock is one of those three things,” productivity coach Liz Sumner told INC. “What information do you need to locate? What decision is up in the air and what are the choices? What needs to be done so that the rest of the pieces can fall into place? Nine times out of 10, these questions will get you moving again.”

SALESPrice First, Features Second

When asked, “How much?” the first digit of a number should always be the first syllable out of your mouth. That’s the advice of sales pro Gene Chamberlain. Start with a sales line like, “You have excellent taste in cat trees” followed by a list of the features and the person stops listening. Start with the price, followed — without pause — by the features, and all of those things you list make the price seem lower and lower.

MANAGEMENTFreeze!

If you want to foster ideas from your team, don’t tell them to “be creative.” That just causes people to freeze up. A much better approach, according to a recent Businessweek article on brainstorming, is to say: “Do something only you would come up with — that none of your colleagues, friends or family would think of.” In experiments, this approach has been shown to yield twice as many creative responses.

HIRINGBeyond ‘What Are Your Weaknesses?’

In the sci-fi novel Engines of God, the code-breaker Maggie Tufu says, “Tell me what a person admires and I’ll tell you everything about them that matters.” It’s profound and true, and a great interview question.

SALESTime to Tune In

Talk less, listen more. We know you’ve heard that before. But professionals who are smart and know what they are talking about are often the worst listeners —even those who write about communication for a living! Best-selling business author Tom Peters, for example, calls listening “the bedrock of leadership excellence,” but at the same time admits he’s a terrible listener and “a serial interrupter.” So, to help him stay focused on the other person, he writes the word “Listen” on the palm of his hand before walking into meetings. “The focus must be on what the other person is saying, not on formulating your response. That kind of listening shows respect for the other person, and they notice it,” he says. Keep it in mind — or on your palm — the next time a customer is telling you what is wrong with their beloved pet.

MANAGEMENTRead the Classics

Look for books relevant 30-plus years later. “They have stood the test oftime for a reason,” author and venture capitalist Naval Ravikant points out.

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Want to improve the productivity of email and avoid flame wars? Use the “Rule of Three,” writes Jim Schleckser in INC: If you can’t resolve something in three emails or less, it’s time to pick up the phone. “I know, it’s old school. But people will often write things in email they would never say to someone in person.” If you find yourself about to enter into an endless email flame war with someone, skip the reply and just call them, he says. “It’s been my experience that this results in a 100% success rate in resolving the issue, usually within minutes of getting on the phone, while limiting unnecessary email.”

HIRINGExperience Doesn’t Equal Performance

When hiring, don’t mistake experience for past performance. Setting requirements like “Three to five years of experience in a pet retail or service setting” is no guarantee of a solid hire. The data is clear, says behavioral psychologist Adam Grant. “Past experience rarely predicts future performance. What matters is past performance — and current motivation and ability. It’s how well people can learn to do a job, not how long they’ve already done it,” he says.

PLANNINGInvite a Vendor

If you hold an annual company strategic retreat for your business, why not invite representatives from your key vendors to sit in for a session or two? Share just about everything. Your vendors will understand you better, and they can usually provide ideas to help you sell better. Jason Jennings, author of Think Big, Act Small cites this policy as a key strength at Sonic Drive-In, one of America’s fastest growing fast-food franchises.

OPERATIONSClear to Neutral

When you enter a kitchen and find the sink piled high with dishes, you’re less likely to want to dive into cooking a meal. The same applies to your office when you have to clear a pile of stuff off your desk to start working. Enter the idea of “clearing to neutral” — a ritual where “whenever you finish an activity, you [move] everything so [it] is in neutral position.” According to Thanh Pham, at the blog Asian Efficiency, when you return to such an environment, it eliminates all of the friction — both physical and mental — and you can quickly get started with what you need to accomplish.

MANAGEMENTWords to Remember

Advertising guru Roy Williams offers a quote that’s worthy of printing and putting in a frame in your back office: “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

COMMUNICATIONSPhone Form

When you meet with someone in person, whether a member of your team or a visiting vendor, make a point of turning off your phone completely, says Chris Bailey, author of Hyper Focus. “(It) shows them they’re important to you, and that you’re ready to give them 100% of your attention.”

MANAGEMENTCreate More Levels

Are your business’s titles limited to Owner, Manager, and then a bunch of random associates or assistants? They shouldn’t be, says Marcus Buckingham, author of First, Break All The Rules. Having additional employee levels creates an inspirational framework for higher achievement. You can do something as simple as following the law-firm model — have “Junior” and “Senior” team members — or as seen in real estate, you could have one “Club” or several based on sales or other achievement levels.

PRODUCTIVITYPrep an Easy Work File

As busy as most business owners and managers are, there are also frequent periods of forced downtime, as you wait for someone to get back to you with a quote, for the lunchtime rush of customers, for a seasonal project to be implemented. For such times, Greg Rudolph, founder and CEO of Board Blazers, recommends keeping an “easy work” file on your desktop. “This includes simple tasks that might require lots of time but can be easily interrupted, such as data entry, reading, or small unfinished items from the day before. That way, you have a simple task ready to go whenever you find yourself with a few free minutes in your day,” he tells INC.

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It’s estimated that American workers attend 55 million meetings each day. And most of these meetings run for an hour. Why? Because that’s what the Outlook scheduling tool dictates. It’s an illogicality made worse by Parkinson’s Law, which says that work expands to fill whatever time is allotted to it, so a meeting scheduled for an hour will, sure enough, consume one hour. But you can also use that adage to your advantage, says Steven Rogelberg, author of The Surprising Science of Meetings and a professor of organizational science at UNC Charlotte. “Schedule a meeting for 48 minutes, for example, and then it will take 48 minutes,” he says, urging bosses to be purposeful in thinking about how long the meeting should be and then dialing it back a bit to create some time pressure. “Research shows that teams perform more optimally under some levels of pressure.”

HIRINGKnow From the Get-Go

Want to ensure any job applicants are true animal lovers? Ask about their pets right from the start. “Our job application says, ‘Tell me about your dog’,” shares Mary Hardin, owner of Woof Gang Bakery in Fleming Island, FL. “This is because we only hire very passionate dog lovers. We employ staff who love to come to work every day and are genuinely excited about seeing the furry customers walk through the door.”

PRODUCTIVITYLeverage the Dread

One of the ironies of procrastination is that it often stems from the mildly discomforting things in life, such as doing taxes. In contrast, you don’t indefinitely put off a root canal. You want to get it over with. According to a trio of new studies out of the University of British Columbia, you can use this psychological quirk to your advantage when you find yourself avoiding a task: Tell yourself that it will be horrible, the absolute worst. “The key to getting tasks off your to-do list is to harness the psychological discomfort of dread, which is negative and unpleasant — and therefore a feeling that most people seek to relieve,” noted an article about the finding in Fast Company.

COMMUNICATIONSShorten Your Emails

Email is great, at least compared to what came before it. But it still takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it. The solution? Treat all email responses like tweets, but with a set limit of five sentences, web designer Mike Davidson told Entrepreneur Magazine. Add the rationale in your signature — that your policy is designed to save everyone time — and you may find everyone in your email circle getting to the point faster.

PRODUCTIVITYThe Secret

Tom Hopkins, author of How to Master the Art of Selling, claims that what you’ll read at the end of this paragraph is the secret to a life of productivity. But there’s a caveat. “I’ll tell you, but you’ll never look at what you’re doing in the same way ever again,” Hopkins quotes his own mentor as telling him. “You might even get angry at me for telling you, because you’ll never get it out of your head.” Bet you can’t wait, huh? OK, here it is: Hang a sign in your workspace that asks one question, and ask that question of everything you do. The question? “Are you doing the most productive thing possible right now?” Yep, that’s it.

MANAGEMENTApply an Immediacy Filter

Life is an exercise in prioritization, but it can be hard to remember that when it comes to some vague unfilled time slot weeks away. “When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: Would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter,” notes Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly on his blog.

SECURITYAdd Screen Time to Online Sales

If you have suspicions about a large online order, ask the customer to join you on FaceTime or Facebook Messenger. “Scammers will not do video chats,” says Mark Fenton, an online private investigator. The former Vancouver detective credits much of the work he gets now to “user idiocy.” Don’t be that person.

MARKETINGNot-So-Humble Brags

The Internet is no place for modesty. Consider posting on your website everything that will enhance your image or inform. That means: your credentials, your experience, your location, hours and after-hours contact information, links to articles about you, volunteer efforts with which you’re involved, your socials, blog, and updates and insights on news.

COMMUNICATIONSThe Beauty of BCC

This is one of those, “How come nobody told me” tips: If you want to send an email to a large group while ensuring that only you receive the replies (so your inbox doesn’t fill up with witty but irrelevant banter just for show), don’t type “PLEASE DO NOT REPLY ALL.” Make it impossible for your employees to do so by putting them in BCC, from where they are only able to reply to you and not the group.

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To be sure, there are bad ideas. But there are also those ideas whose time just hasn’t come. It’s this understanding that prompted author Oliver Burkeman to keep a running file of ideas from which virtually nothing gets deleted. “When I needed an idea, I’d peruse the list, and sure enough, most of the entries would still seem mediocre, stupid or derivative. But for mysterious reasons, one or two entries — entries that might have sat there looking lifeless for months or years — would suddenly feel ripe, full of life, ready to be used.” Create an “Ideas” file on your phone.

OPERATIONSShift Your Shifts

Busy times fluctuate throughout the year, which means you should regularly reassess and readjust your staffing schedules. “We always see a shift in our busy times during the spring. In winter, our mornings are much slower as customers don’t get out and shop as early, but March when the time change hits and warmer weather moves in, we see lots of customers out shopping in the mornings, so we change up staffing to make sure we’re ready for the earlier shoppers,” notes Joanna Shaw, owner of All Pet & Equine Supply in Mountain Home, AR.

STAFFGive Customers a Shot

Whether you hire customers as employees typically depends on whether you’ve had a positive or negative experience when doing so. Laurie Seaman of Dolittle’s in Charleston, SC, has had great success. She points out, “At least your customers have a base knowledge and agreement in the products you sell and what your store is about. Looking at Indeed, it’s like the applicants just went down a webpage and hit ‘Apply’ for so many places, with absolutely no pet experience. Those are also the people we set up interviews for, and they no show or cancel.”

SELF-IMPROVEMENTIt’s Never Too Late to Start

So it’s now March … Delay a task or new habit long enough, and you can fall into the trap of feeling like it’s simply too late to get started. Rather than berate yourself, reach for a can of forgiveness. That was the conclusion of a study by Carlton University’s Department of Psychology into the connection between forgiveness and task initiation among students. The study found those who were able to forgive themselves for putting off studying for an exam were better able to overcome procrastination and hit the books sooner for their second exam. “Remember that there’s no designated ‘right’ time to start,” noted the productivity gurus at lifehacker.com. “It’s never too late. You’re only human. So, know your weaknesses, forgive yourself and just get going.”

MINDSETStay Optimistic

The economy is slowing, and political polarization continues unabated. How to stay upbeat even in tumultuous times? “Flash a stop sign,” Nate Zinsser, director of the performance psychology program at West Point, told Bloomberg. “When your mind throws you fear or doubt or worry, visualize an actual stop sign. You want to deliberately cease those thoughts and replace them with optimistic — or at least vaguely constructive — thoughts. Talk back to the negativity the same way you would your obnoxious brother when he’s talking garbage.”

BUYINGPut New Products to a Vote

If you’re on the fence about any products you see at Global Pet Expo, bring back samples and ask your customers for input via social media and through in-store samples and demos. April Meier, owner of Pawsitively Scrumptious in Crestview, FL, loads up on samples of such items, then asks her customers to “vote” on which they’d like to see her carry. Bonus: She says, “Giving them a ‘voice’ helps to promote sales when the new items come in.”

OPERATIONSBuild a Staff Website

Need a spring project? How about building a dedicated website just for staff? Sal Salafia, owner of Exotic Pet Birds in Webster, NY, says such an online resource — which allows his staff to access FAQs, request time off, create weekly schedules and keep up-to-date on product information — has been “a game-changer” for his business. “Took months to build, but was so worth it.”

SELF-AWARENESSBetter Than Perfect

Perfection isn’t just impossible, it’s counterproductive, notes Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and author of the bestseller Think Again. “Perfectionists are more likely to burn out and less likely to embrace new challenges. Success depends on high standards, not being flawless. The target is not perfection — it’s excellence.”

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Imagine you end up in the ER after a fall. Will you respond best if the attending doctor freaks out and yells, “Oh, my! That’s horrific!” Or if she looks at your scrapes and bruises and calmly says, “Let’s take care of that.” It’s the same in any stressful situation, argues designer Mike Monteiro, in an online essay: “Anxiety is conductive. It wants to travel from one person to another.” At his studio, they have a rule: Stop adopting other people’s anxiety. “Once a client becomes anxious,” Monteiro says, “their primary goal becomes to make you anxious because that justifies their own anxiety.” Apply this approach not only to customers but your staff as well. Be the calm doctor.

GOAL-SETTINGKnow When to Quit

With the new year comes “sky’s the limit” thinking. But a little negativity can be a good thing, argues Annie Duke in her new book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away: “Optimism causes you to overestimate both the likelihood and magnitude of success and stick to things too long. Unchecked by realism, it prevents you from quitting when you ought to walk away.” Keep this in mind when re-evaluating 2022 efforts for 2023.

MARKETINGLook Ahead

If you haven’t already, give customers a sneak peek at what you have planned for this year. Are you expanding into a new product area? Introducing new services? Growing your staff? Taking any industry training? Send out an email recapping the past year and let people know what you have planned for the new one, Constant Contact recommends in its monthly marketing newsletter.

SELF-MANAGEMENTInstitute a Progress Ritual

One of the biggest problems with being the boss is that few people will give you direct feedback on your performance or directly offer kind words of inspiration. And yet studies show that the single biggest motivator of performance is the feeling of making progress in a meaningful task. But if your underlings aren’t likely to do that, you have to find the feedback yourself. And the best way to do that, business author Dan Pink says, is to establish a progress ritual. “At the end of every day, take just 60 seconds to record and memorialize what progress you made that day.” Then pat yourself on the back … or light a fire.

MARKETINGChange the Story

“When times are good, buying things is a sport. It’s a reward. When things aren’t so good, we need a new story to tell ourselves,” marketer Seth Godin writes on his blog. Business owners have to figure out how to change the story their customers can tell themselves, he says, citing the example of how a $4 cup of premium coffee can change from becoming a trivial indulgence in good times to a reward for a financial sacrifice in bad times. “It all adds up to a perception.”

MANAGEMENTCompliment More

Few things are more powerful than a compliment, but many hold back from saying nice things out of fear the other person will find it annoying, that they’ve heard it all before, or that they’ll stumble over their words and deliver a poor one. But these concerns are nearly entirely groundless, says Vanessa Bohn, an associate professor of organizational behavior at Cornell and author of You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters: “Just worry about getting the words out because people like hearing nice things about themselves. Most people say they wish they gave more compliments. And it turns out they make people happier than we think.”

PRODUCTIVITYSet Yourself Real Tasks

If your 2023 to-do list is anything like ours, it probably features items like “Learn to read Dostoevsky in Russian” and “Climb Mount Shasta.” But these aren’t tasks, they’re projects, Gina Trapani, founder of Lifehacker.org, says: “To get to the point where you’re checking things off, you want to make it a doable to-do list. Things need to be as easy for yourself to do as possible. So you have to break things down into tasks.” In other words, think small.

COMMUNICATIONMimic Your Customers

Studies show mimicking the way someone talks is one of the most effective ways of building rapport. Sales pro John Nicolosi recommends: “Match customer’s tone of voice (up or down), speech tempo (fast or slow), words they use.” So if they say they are looking for a shampoo that makes their dog’s coat “shine,” then you say “shine.” Don’t overdo it, though. You want your customers to think you’re like them, not making fun of them.

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1. Find better solutions by basking in the problem.

Planning season is here but don’t rush it, says Tina Seelig, a Stanford business professor and author of “Creativity Rules: Get Ideas Out Of Your Head And Into The World”. Rather, let yourself bask in the issues for a while. If you go straight to the solution, you will likely end up thinking too narrowly, whereas if you frame wider, you can often come up with a creative answer, she says. “Living in that problem space and falling in love with your problems is one of the most powerful ways to unlock really innovative solutions,” Seelig writes. (Note that this applies to creative issues: For day-to-day problems, we often know what to do straight away, and what we call “deliberation” is actually just dithering.)

2. Stretch your stretch goals.

Setting stretch goals of, say, a 5 percent improvement for employees may be attainable through extra hard work and efficiency. But what if you told your staff you’d like them to improve their performance in a certain area by 30 percent? Impossible? Yes, but that’s the point. They would have to totally rethink how they go about hitting their numbers. To kickstart innovative thinking, you often have to first destroy the old ways of doing things.

3. We are at a unique moment in retail history – embrace the uncertainty and thrive.

The pandemic changed customers’ expectations. They now want the extra online options, to buy by phone and pick up curbside, to receive box from you in the mail, to possibly make contact via live social video. “If you are ready to embrace the omni-experiential future with open arms, things have never looked brighter for independent retailers,” says retail coach Bob Negen. To succeed in the post-COVID world of retail, you’ll need to take everything you learned during the pandemic, and build on it. “Your in-store experience is now only ONE of MANY ways for your customer to experience your business.”

4. The salesfloor is a stage. You need to rehearse.

Role-playing is one of the most effective ways of improving your team’s skills yet many pet store owners shy away from it on the grounds their staff may resist out of fear of embarrassment. But you shouldn’t. At Paws on Chicon in Austin, TX, staff take part in daily role-playing exercises. “They learn different ways to handle situations or answer questions, or if someone had a problem the day before, we role-play it to see how we could handle it better,” says owner Keith Zeiler. “We also role-play new products. It keeps everyone on their toes.” Adds sales trainer Dave Richardson: Make the role-playing positive and fun. Staff won’t be enthusiastic if the focus is negative.

5. Be nice to people who are leaving.

It’s no secret that staff turnover in the retail industry is high, especially right now. But that is no reason to treat departing workers the way you would an expired bottle of milk. On the contrary, handling them well has benefits for your business, HR magazine quotes Gail Gunderson of Ohio State University as saying. If you treat exiting workers with understanding and respect, they may decide to change their minds. They may also tell you the real reason they are leaving, which is important information if you suffer from high turnover. Parting on good terms potentially leaves the door open for them to return. And even if they don’t, they will have positive things to say, which could attract others. Finally, a cordial exit signals to remaining staff that you’re a decent boss who cares about his workers as people, which is good for morale.

6. Get ready now for the next crisis

We seem to be putting the pandemic behind us, and the future is looking bright for your business. Start looking to build a reserve now if needed. The one inviolable law of business is that trouble is nearly always around the corner, management guru Peter Drucker told Inc.com in one of his last interviews. “I saved more new enterprises than I can remember by simply telling the founder who showed me how beautifully things were going that now is the time to provide for your next financing.” How? If you have six months to a year to provide for your next financing, you can be reasonably sure you’ll get it and at favorable terms, Drucker added.

7. The secret words to make an annual review productive

Employees generally hate reviews. Managers generally hate giving them. With the right approach, however, both sides can leave the meeting feeling they’ve been involved in something productive and looking forward to improved performance. In his book CULTURE CODE: THE SECRETS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL GROUPS, Daniel Coyle recommends using these 19 words to deliver the feedback: “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” Why does it work? According to Coyle, it builds trust, signals belonging, and combines high standards with the assurance that people can reach those standards.

8. Add life to those plain walls

Do you have windows that won’t work for displays? Or a plain wall — inside or out — that you don’t know what to do with? Consider hiring an artist who works in paint or vinyl.

Why? That’s what these six pet stores did, and the results have helped make their stores local landmarks while pleasing pet parents and art lovers alike.

Start by researching local restrictions on window graphics (some districts have prohibitions on what you can display. Also, plan for replacement every five years because the vinyl does weather. Matthew Tapia, co-owner of The Public Pet in Honolulu, HI

Also offers this advice: “Always try to set up that ‘Instagram Moment’ for your customers, and have the artist’s handle or hashtag vis- ible for people to use.” Tagging the artist allows you to reach art lovers who also have pets.

9. Do less.

“The Underachiever’s Manifesto” doesn’t sound like a book you’d find on the shelves of the ambitious business owner. But it should be. Written by a doctor named Ray Bennett it advocates a path to a superior kind of achievement based on the idea that you need to leave some slack in your life to take advantage of the serendipity of the world, and to give yourself the elbow room you need to excel. He quotes that Spanish underachiever Pablo Picasso: “You must always work not just within, but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two … In that way, the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.”

10. Want to be a great boss? You need to have confidence — and doubt.

Why? “The best leaders have ‘the attitude of wisdom’ — the confidence to act on their convictions and the humility to keep searching for evidence that they are wrong,” writes Stanford business professor Bob Sutton in a column for the HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW.

“Yes, you need to carry yourself in a way that shows you are in charge, but it’s vital to couple that strength with a humbleness that ensures you realize you will often be wrong, and which encourages people to suggest alternative ways of doing things,” he says.

11. Unruly kid rampaging through the store? Offer them their own shopping kart to fill up.

Kids can cause havoc in a pet store, posing a threat to animals, themselves and your stock. Rather than running around trying to catch every display they may upend, get them engaged in some orderly activity, ideally one that may ring up some sales at the checkout.

At the Firehouse Pet Shop in Wenatchee, WA, staff go out of their way to make children feel welcome and have fun. “We offer them popcorn, a free fire hat, and even a kids shopping cart to fill up. As for the parent, hopefully it gives them a needed break and they appreciate our help,” says co-owner Jennifer Larsen. Adventure Pets in Mandeville, LA, uses a similarly positive but slightly different approach: children are givena an early lesson in pet care and encouraged to feed the fish (one pellet at a time) in their koi pond.

12. Always do a working interview withtop job candidates

A paid “trial” of two to three days will help you “avoid disasters by being an open book and also giving us a window into the candidate’s customer service skills,” says Alison Schwartz, who uses such an approach at her store, All Pets Considered, in Greensboro, NC. It also allows for a a “no hard feelings” divorce if the candidate herself doesn’t feel like it’s the place for her.

During their working interview, candidates are given a brief tour of the store to review the products that All Pets Considered carries, and then put to work at the register to check out customers and answer phones. “Listen to your staff and their observations because they are the ones who will be most closely working with these individuals. They often have opinions that are valuable when it comes to hiring decisions,” Schwartz says.

13. Get a digital business card made up ahead of your next trade show.

It will save time, money and trees. Nancy Guinn, the owner of Virginia-based independent pet food chain Dog Krazy, says that with such a card, she can simply tap a new contact’s phone to upload their business information via NFC technology, or they can scan the QR code on the back, which can be updated online at any time.

14. Prepare a training checklist for new hires and be sure to include all the important details — even the obvious ones.

Andy Wiltz of Woof’s Play & Stay in Merriam, KS, says, “Some tasks seem overly simple, like how to scoop poop and wash the scooper. You might think it seems condescending to break it down, but the team appreciates it, and it gives them a sense of accomplishment knowing they are working through the task list pretty easily.” Ask your team for help and make it a live document that can be constantly updated. Keep in mind too the some of the other professionals who use checklists as part of their daily routines – pilots, surgeons, software engineers — are all people in critical positions. Even when they are not saving lives, checklists simply make things go more smoothly.

15. Hesitant to dive into video for fear of being judged? Get over yourself.

Putting yourself on camera isn’t about you. It’s about the message you have. And most importantly, it’s arguably the best medium for building the crucial “know, like, trust” factor with customers, says Candace D’Agnolo of Pet Boss Nation. Don’t worry about being perfect. Indeed, the messy can be perfect because the imperfect is relatable, says D’Agnolo, who recommends aiming for three short Reels on one day every week, and doing a Facebook live for 15 minutes weekly.

16. Create “New Pet” kits for shelters to give out to adopters.

Include food, scoop bags, cat litter … whatever your vendors are willing to donate. And, most importantly, a $5 gift card to get these new pet parents in your store.

17. Reboot Your Phone Every Week

That’s part of the National Security Agency’s recently released “best practices” guide for mobile device security. While it won’t stop a sophisticated hacker, it will make them work harder to maintain access and steal data from your phone. “This is all about imposing cost on these malicious actors,” Neal Ziring, technical director of the NSA’s cybersecurity directorate, told the Associated Press. The reason is that the latest malicious software typically targets your phone’s root file system. But the newest phones can detect and block such malware during a reboot.

18. Slow-moving product? Tie a bow on it.

Getting seasonal inventory right is a tough balancing act: Order too much and you’re stuck with merchandise that won’t move after Dec. 25. Order too little and you miss a prime selling opportunity. The answer? Be conservative and if you have a better-than-expected year, dress up regular stock as festive season goodies.

“When we run out of holiday merch, we tie red ribbons on regular merch and bundle products,” says Pattie Zeller, owner of the Animal Connnection in Charlottesville, VA, crediting Bob Negen of WhizBang Retail for the idea. “It works every time for other holidays too. And bundling always increases the average sale.”

19. Force a real decision

The next time you ask an employee or partner for their opinion on a business-related matter, say to rate a job candidate, a new line or a business proposition, ask them for a score between one and 10 but tell them they can’t choose seven. Seven is a fudge, says speaker and author Kyle Maynard. Force the person to choose between at least an eight, an indication that they’re genuinely excited by the prospect, and a six, which usually means they’d pass on it.

20. Always add, “which means…”

To boost the impact of your sales presentations and really, REALLY ensure your prospective customer understands the benefits of what you’re selling, always add “which means…” after every feature you share, says “Wizard of Ads” author Roy H Williams. “You can add these words verbally, or you can add them silently, but this habit will bridge you into language the customer can see in their mind,” he writes in his weekly Monday Morning Memo. Williams provides the following examples: “This blade is made of Maxamet steel, which means you’ll never have to sharpen it” and “This is a 52-week schedule, which means your name will become the one people think of immediately and feel the best about.”

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The human brain can process images at amazing speeds, with recent research measuring it at about 1/20 of a second. What does that mean for you? Images are a great way to get your message across quickly in your December and January email bulletins. The blog team at Constant Contact compiled this handy list of tools and resources for holiday images constant contact.com/blog/holiday-images-tools/ (tapping a range of sources from Canva to Adobe) to help you quickly create more engaging holiday emails and social media posts.

MANAGEMENTStay Calm and Keep Ringing

Just about everyone is in a rush during those last weeks of the year. Customers, staff, the UPS driver … but it shouldn’t be you. “People who are in a hurry shouldn’t make you feel like you need to rush through ringing; that’s how errors happen. Just try to stay cool and be thorough,” advises Shane Somerville of Paddywack in Mill Creek, WA.

MARKETINGPartner with Micro Influencers

If your holiday season marketing needs a late boost, consider a local micro-influencer (1,000 to 10,000 followers) to help get the word out in your market. According to a recent article in Forbes, they work fast (posting almost as soon as they get your product in their hands), can target a niche audience, and are “often considered more reliable by their followers as well.”

MANAGEMENTFree Lunches

Buying lunch for staff during the holiday season is a smart move. As our Brain Squad members noted in a recent survey, not only does it keep them fueled during a draining time, but it keeps them in the store when it’s full of customers and it’s a nice reward for their hard work. Some owners spring the free meals randomly to add a nice surprise to a day. Others create a schedule — say, every Saturday in November through December. Krista Schmidt, owner of St PetersBARK! in St Petersburg, FL, does it the entire week before Christmas, supporting the message: This is peak peak time.

INVENTORYParty Likes It’s New Year’s Day

“Physical inventory” and “party” are two words that don’t always go together. But they do at Purrrfect Bark in Columbus, NC, to nice effect. Explains owner Laura Backus: “We do physical inventory on Jan. 1 with lots of food and drinks, music and laughs. Everyone participates, and we get it knocked out in a day.”

MARKETINGLeave a Good First Impression

You’ll probably never have as many people in the store as those final weeks before Christmas. Be sure to leave a good impression on these new faces. Jennie Dudley at Hairy Winston in Mount Pleasant, SC, does that by slipping samples into new customers’ bags. It’s a neat way to expose them to your product lineup and get them back in the store in the new year.

PLANNINGLooking Beyond the Season

The holiday season can be all-consuming, but keep one eye on the months beyond. “It’s important to have a plan in place for what the store will look like in January, when the holidays are over. Having a fresh look going into January really helps,” notes Jeff Jensen of Four Muddy Paws in St. Louis, MO. Nikki Tongg of Faux Paws Pet Shop in Summit, NJ, says the same applies to your inventory. “We always try to find new toys to refresh our January stock. People are sick of seeing holiday stuff by January so we like to bring in something new.”

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Yoga practitioners are known to say, “No hurry, no pause.” The Navy SEALs have a mantra, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” And then of course, there is the slow and steady tortoise we’re introduced as a child. But the lesson of all these invocations isn’t so much about a tactic to win the race. It’s that life — and business — is so much more pleasurable when you’re in the flow and enjoying the journey. “You don’t need to go through life huffing and puffing, straining and red-faced; you can get 95 percent (and maybe even more) of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other,” Tim Ferriss notes in Tools of Titans. “Perhaps I’m just getting old, but my definition of luxury has changed over time. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed. No hurry, no pause.”

EXIT STRATEGYBe Prepared to Walk

After helping almost 100 owners sell their businesses, consultant Stephen Semple of Business Growth Guys says he has one core piece of advice: Run your business like you are planning to own it for the next 20 years. Buyers will often try to low-ball you at the very last minute, knowing full well that owners have often already sold the company in their heart and are ready to move on. “The champagne is on ice, and the owner is not emotionally capable of walking away from the closing table. To fight this, the seller needs to remain ready to walk. Walking away is the only power the seller has,” Semple says.

COMMUNITYOffer Chip Scanning

Want to add some feel-good factor to people’s perception of your brand? Become a microchip scanning location and help reunite lost pets. “We get lost pets in every week and have reunited over 100 pets with their family,” Mary Hardin, owner of Woof Gang Bakery Fleming Island in Fleming Island, FL, says. “If you find a stray animal, everyone knows you can bring it to Woof Gang for a microchip scan. Our staff loves being able to reunite pets who have made their way to the pet bakery.”

MANAGEMENTKeep Some “Slop”

Do you keep 50 percent of your time unscheduled? If not, you’re probably not leaving enough slack in your day to manage optimally. That’s the view of Dov Frohman, a former VP at Intel, who during his corporate career also found enough time to invent EPROM, a widely used type of computer memory. In his book Leadership The Hard Way, he argues that bosses should ensure they maintain sufficient “slop” in their schedules to allow space for reflection and the assimilation of lessons learned from experience.

PRODUCTIVITYDo the Right Stuff First

Not an original tip, but an incredibly important one, which in this iteration goes by the mnemonic M.I.T. Nope, it’s not the fancy college in Massachusetts. It stands for “most important task.” At the start of the day, work out the most important task that you have to do and, this is key, do it first. Don’t clear out your email, don’t check Twitter, do your MIT. “Get it out of the way, and the rest of the day is gravy,” Leo Babauta, founder of the Zen Habits blog, says.

MARKETINGBring Discipline to Your Message

Feel your marketing is more scattershot than cohesive? Then bring discipline to it with a Brand Messaging Guide, says Andrea Hill, CEO of small-business consultancy Hill Marketing Group. Start by coming up with three things you wish every potential customer knew about your business and use them to inform all of your marketing. “Consider how each of these items benefits the customer and create two or three benefit statements for each,” says Hill.

COMMUNICATIONLet Staff Win

You may be the boss, but that doesn’t mean you should win all arguments. Ease up, says Phil Dusenberry of top ad agency BBDO in a profile in Fast Company magazine. Cede a debating point, the execution of an idea, or even ownership of a concept at least once a day, and your staff will praise your open-mindedness and feel more free to act boldly.

SECURITYDon’t Be Rushed

Our emotions lead us into places we’d often be wise to avoid. It’s a thing conmen know too well, says psychologist and writer Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game. The answer? To pause. “Time is the great antidote to emotion,” she says. “Scammers will rush you; taking space to reflect is your best defense against conmen. The same applies when reading a news headline, or a tweet, which wants you to hurry up and feel something. Don’t be rushed.”

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When faced with a seemingly intractable problem, have you ever called a friend or family member for help? And as you were explaining the issue, did the solution come to you before the person could barely utter a word? If so, you’re not alone, and the trick is well known enough among software engineers to have its own name: rubber duck debugging. It comes from a story in The Pragmatic Programmer about a software coder who would carry around such a bath toy. When confronted with a line of buggy code, he would pull out his yellow friend and explain line-by-line what wasn’t working, and in doing so often find the solution. According to Wikipedia — yes it even has its own entry — the method works with just about any inanimate object, or even a pet! So now you no longer need to bug your friends when a problem keeps you up at night.

QUALIFICATIONSShout It From the Rooftops

Your certifications are nothing to be modest about. Indeed, they give your customers reassurance about the products, services and advice you offer. That’s been the experience of Penny Murano of Unleashed in New London, NH. “Once [team member] Abbey and I finished our Pet Nutrition Coach certification, we let customers know! We posted it all over our social media and have our certifications hanging up in the store.” Murano says their ability to find the right nutritional information has super-charged referrals. “We have so many new customers coming in who have heard how we have helped their friends’ dogs!”

SALESAlways Add, “Which Means…”

To boost the impact of your sales presentations and really, really ensure your prospective customer understands the benefits of what you’re selling, add “which means…” after every feature you share, says “Wizard of Ads” author Roy H. Williams. “You can add these words verbally, or you can add them silently, but this habit will bridge you into language the customer can see in their mind,” he writes in his weekly Monday Morning Memo. Williams provides the following example: “This blade is made of Maxamet steel, which means you’ll never have to sharpen it.”

COMMUNICATIONSFriday Facebook

At the heart of social media’s attraction is “engagement,” as business communication becomes a two-way street. Healthy Pet Products in Cranberry Township, PA, leverages that feature nicely with its “Friday Free for All,” during which they open up their social media channels so customers can post any questions they may have, concerns they want to share or product suggestions. The questions are then answered in a short video by owner Toni Shelaske. “This is an opportunity for the customers to ask what they want to know while really getting a chance to interact with the owner of our company to make sure their voices are being heard,” assistant store manager Ashley Watkins says. “Not to mention, we get to know our customers better and learn better ways to serve them.”

SELF-IMPROVEMENTAsk About Your Blind Spots

Ask people for feedback, and they sometimes tell you what you want to hear. Ask them about your blind spots, and they’re more likely to tell you what you need to hear. So says organizational psychologist Adam Grant in his new book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. “Gains in self-awareness often begin with the question: What do other people know about me that I might not realize?”

PERSONAL IMPROVEMENTTests From the Gods

When faced with a frustration, it’s easy to fall prey to anger and want to lash out. But that rarely makes things better. Instead, try to reframe the experience as a test of the imaginary Stoic gods, says William Irvine, author of The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer and More Resilient. “It’s not a setback, the Stoic gods are testing your resilience,” he says. “They are not punishing you, they are giving you an opportunity to show your courage.”

MANAGEMENTReward Small Victories

On the way to a grand goal, celebrate the smallest victories as if each one were the final goal, writes WIRED co-founder Kevin Kelly on his blog: “No matter where it ends, you are victorious.”

MANAGEMENTKnow When to Get Out of the Way

There are times when the best management is none at all. Stanford business school professor Bob Sutton writes on LinkedIn that a common problem with business meetings is “groupthink,” a premature consensus where everyone agrees on a plan before more potentially innovative solutions have a chance to surface. A key contributor to this can be the presence of the boss, whose suggestions will frame the debate and stifle contributions from the team. “Sometimes the best way for a leader to reduce undue influence is to leave the room or avoid going to meetings where his or her presence will dampen frank discussion and deep examination of facts,” he writes.

MARKETINGThe Best Online Reviews

Not all reviews are created equal. Eighty three percent of consumers say reviews must be recent and relevant in order to care about them. Ideally, you want reviews that have been posted within the last week. But how to achieve that? Hayley Sonntag, a marketing specialist at review management site Podium, says to send out a text with a link asking for a review while the customer is still in the store. “They’re happy in that moment. Once they walk out it’s hard to remember to do it.”

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In the wake of the pandemic, people are looking to take longer vacations and increasingly with their pets, with one study finding more than half of dog owners will take their pups on the road with them this year. If you’re in a tourist destination, be the resource for those families. Wagging It In The ADK in Old Forge, NY, does that with a brochure they update and publish each year, with information about local attractions, hotels and restaurants that welcome animals.

STRATEGYMe, Overconfident? Pfft!

Nobel-winning behavioral scientist Daniel Kahneman once said that if he could wave a magic wand and eliminate a single human foible, it would be overconfidence. We human beings believe we know more than we really do. In particular, we have unwarranted faith in our forecasting abilities and our intuitions. In his Book of Beautiful Questions, Warren Berger argues that the answer to this cognitive blind spot lies in honest self-interrogation, asking yourself: 1) Do I think more like a soldier or a scout? (Soldiers defend positions, scouts explore new territory.); 2) Would I rather be right or would I rather understand? (Long-term knowledge is way more valuable than a short-term victory.); 3) Do I seek out opposing views? (Say “Tell me if you disagree and explain why” instead of asking “Don’t you agree?); and 4) Do I enjoy the pleasant surprise of discovering I’m mistaken? (Being wrong is only a failure if you didn’t learn something new). Ask them before your next strategy review.

SALESGo Easy on the Eyes

Something cats would understand. One of the things that every new salesperson is taught is to look the customer in the eyes. But it’s easy to overdo it, especially for people of a more reserved nature. “One of the ways you can spot an introvert is if you stare them right in the eyes. Introverts will often feel like they’re staring into the sun and be like OK, I need to back up here and reset a little bit, whereas extroverts tend to find eye contact much more energizing, and the intensity is not the same for them,” says Wharton psychologist Adam Grant. If rapport is your goal, be “very mindful of those kinds of preferences.”

INVENTORYSummer’s Bounty

Everyone loves seasonally fresh produce, and that goes for tortoises and hamsters, too. To ensure humans’ small friends are eating well, Northwoods Pets in Rhinelander, WI, partners with local small farms in the summer “to offer fresh, organic packaged greens for both reptiles and small pets,” owner Jennifer Marshall says.

GOODWILL MARKETINGForget the Change

Roundups are a neat way to help a worthy cause, costing the customer little but giving them a chance to feel good after interacting with your business. In 2021, All Pets Considered in Greensboro, NC, raised over $30,000 through such an initiative for local non-profits by simply “inviting our customers to roundup their total,” owner Alison Schwartz says.

PRODUCTIVITYBeep Beep

Some jobs, such as managing a pet business, are prone to interruptions, which can make them exciting as you rush to deal with problems or help customers, but they can wreak havoc on achieving your goals for the day. In “18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction and Get the Right Things Done,” Peter Bregman recommends that you: Set your phone to beep every hour, and when that timer goes off: Take a deep breath and ask yourself, am I doing what I need to be doing right now. If you’re with a client — great. Ignore it. You’re doing something constructive and will feel good. If you’d intended to spend five minutes looking for a new umbrella online but have now fallen down a hole of 1970s TV trivia, it will pull you out and get you back on track.

MANAGEMENTForce a Real Decision

The next time you ask an employee for their opinion on a business matter, say to rate a job candidate or a new line, ask them for a score between one and 10, but not seven. Seven is a fudge, says author Kyle Maynard. Force the person to choose between at least eight, an indication that they’re genuinely excited by the prospect, and six or below, a sign they’d pass on it.

MANAGEMENTDivide and Conquer

Create “areas of pride” in your store to promote a fun spirit of competition and a better knowledge of inventory among the staff, urges sales pro John Nicolosi. How to do it? “Assign each sales associate to merchandise, promote and clean a particular area each month,” he says.

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When a star staffer gives notice, you likely ask, “How can I get you to stay?” Generational expert Meagan Johnson recommends not waiting until a valued team member quits to pose this question. She suggests incorporating Stay Interviews into your human resource strategies, especially with younger employees who live in the present with their employer, as opposed to when a traditional review may have been last done. Johnson says, “The first Stay Interview occurs within the first 60 days of employment, followed by whenever a manager or supervisor feels a Stay Interview is needed. If you feel that someone’s becoming discouraged, disheartened, burnt out — you can perform a Stay Interview.” Among the questions she suggests including: “What kind of feedback or recognition would you like about your performance that you aren’t currently receiving? and “When was the last time you thought about leaving your job and what was the cause of you thinking about leaving?” Who wouldn’t appreciate the opportunity to have such a conversation, no matter their age?

marketingReward Online Mentions

If a team member’s name pops up in online reviews, more people will come in and ask for that person. To encourage such excellent service, Wag Nation in Newport, RI, rewards employees each time they are positively reviewed, with a bonus that could be anything from store credit to cash for their car payment. “The bonus is a great way to show our appreciation and keep our customers at the forefront of everyone’s agenda,” owner Tallia Luvera says. “Likewise, this allows our staff to feel comfortable taking their time with our customers, walking the store with them, going above and beyond.”

communicationMaster Chat Messages

Can’t decide whether to text or call a customer about an upcoming event at your business? Send a voice note instead: They aren’t intrusive, are more personal than a text and “sound like personal mini podcasts,” notes The Guardian.

salesWait a Minute … Then Pounce

The right moment to approach a customer who enters your store has vexed retailers for generations. Jump too early, and they may flee the store or get defensive. Wait too long, and they may slip out or, worse, consider it poor service. Retail expert Paco Underhill, whose company collects some 50,000 hours of consumer behavior on tape every year, concludes that about one minute is the golden time when shoppers are most amenable to being approached by an employee.

self-improvementWork on Your Failure Resume

Flagellating yourself with a list of professional screw-ups sounds like a recipe for negativity. But according to Melanie Stefan, a lecturer at Edinburgh Medical School, it’s actually a good way to come to grips with the false narratives many of us carry in our head about success: That it appears fully formed and all at once. In actuality, accomplishment is the end result of a lot of failures. In addition to helping us understand what we have learned from our misses, keeping a “Failure Resume” — a personal record of all the things that didn’t turn out the way we hoped — is a surprising source of inspiration to overcome adversity and persevere, she told the New York Times.

wellnessEnjoy the Cookie

If you’re going to reward yourself with something less than healthy, say a cookie or a free roam through social media, at least enjoy it. Wellness expert Karden Rabin says in Adobe’s online creativity resource 99U, “If you’re thinking, I want to be nice to myself and have a cookie, you’re going to miss the pleasure principle of eating that cookie if you’re on your phone and distracting yourself at the same time.” Instead, take the time to savor the moment while being present, she says.

marketingGestures That Stick

Give stickers to customers with new pets. Stephanie Wright of Bend Pet Express in Bend, OR, enlisted the help of staff member Lauren to create three for those who have new dog, cat or small animal family members. The illustrations are adorable, and customers appreciate the warm welcome.

financesLittle Changes Mean Big Savings

According to the National Retail Federation blog, Walmart recently reported it would save $20 million a year just by changing its floor wax to a cheaper and sturdier version, meaning its floors would need to be buffed less often. $20 million is peanuts for Walmart and floor wax is pretty boring, but as the blog noted, simple savings can add up. “It might be time to dig deeply into the ho-hum products you use to see if savings or innovations are available.”

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If you’re as competitive as most businesspeople, it can be tough starting a new year, especially when there’s economic uncertainty ahead. Whatever numbers you posted last year, you’re now back to zero. To get yourself psyched up, try a variation of a motivational trick used by insurance-industry sales vets: Work out how many times in the past year you actively reached out to a prospective customer through a personal email, phone call or networking activity and attach a dollar value to it. How? Simply by taking the sales you estimate you made by making those calls/emails/handshakes (let’s say $20,000) and dividing it by the number of times you did such personal reach-out (let’s say 1,000). Now, when you’re feeling uninspired think of that figure ($20). That’s what every single phone call or e-mail is worth, whether it is immediately successful or not.

PRODUCTIVITYThis Year, Ditch Your To-Do List

We nearly all use them, but to-do lists don’t have a great record. Studies show the vast majority of items that go on them, never get done. Management consultant Kelly Nolan suggests in its place you try her “Bright Method.” It basically boils down to blocking out time for everything in a digital calendar (including waking, showering, dressing, exercising, etc.) so that you know what you can say “yes” and “no” to. Nolan finds that the system empowers people to make good decisions “because they realize when it’s actually impossible to take something else on.”

MANAGEMENTStart a Tradition

Barbara Bradley Baekgaard, co-founder and CEO of fashion brand Vera Bradley, has maintained a personal touch throughout its impressive growth to half a billion in annual sales. When the company started, leadership would put $50 in employee birthday cards with a note that said: “This has to be spent on you.” Now at 3,000 employees, there’s still a $50 bill in each card. “Finance asks every year if we can just put the money in people’s paychecks, and I say no,” Bradley Baekgaard told the National Retail Federation’s blog. “When you have found money in cash, it’s just more meaningful.”

BRAINSTORMINGRiff Don’t Stiff

When brainstorming, improvising, jamming with others, you’ll go much further and deeper if you build upon each contribution with a playful “yes — and” example instead of a deflating “no — but” reply, says Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly on his blog.

SELF-IMPROVEMENTStop Fighting Bad Habits

It’s that time of year when people make vows to break unhealthy habits. Everyone seems to have their own idea about how to make such a promise to yourself stick, with most of them suggesting some form of self-coercion. But in his classic guide to the mental side of peak performance, “The Inner Game of Tennis,” W. Timothy Gallwey argues that the best approach is to remove the behavior from your focus. “There is no need to fight old habits,” he says. “Start new ones instead.” Donuts with your afternoon coffee killing your diet? Start a habit of leaving the store and walking around the block as soon as you feel the 2 p.m. blahs coming on.

FINANCESSugar Bag It

Bringing in your lunch is one way to show staff you are serious about the need to control costs. But if you really want to show you’re serious in 2022, pack that lunch in a used Domino Sugar bag, “with its multiple layers of industrial strength, indestructible paper,” says Jeff Yeager, who bills himself as the ultimate cheapskate. One of the readers of his blog (ultimatecheapskate.com) reports that his bag has “served him faithfully, day in and day out, for six long years.”

MANAGEMENTChoose Growth Over Sensitivity

It can be tempting to refrain from delivering even mild criticism out of the fear you’ll hurt someone’s feelings. But withholding feedback is choosing comfort over growth, says Adam Grant, professor of organizational psychology at Wharton business school and author of Think Again. “Staying silent deprives people of the opportunity to learn. If you’re worried about hurting their feelings, it’s a sign that you haven’t earned their trust. In healthy relationships, honesty is an expression of care,” he says.

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