Taking a break

I had a full two weeks off over Christmas and New Years and I was able to fully relax. This does not come easy to me as there is always something that needs to be done. During the break I switched my phone over to a “new to me” phone as my old phone was falling apart (the screen was coming off in pieces). It is an older model phone which doesn’t have all the apps and bells and whistles that my current phone had. I was a little annoyed at first as I use so many apps for my business but as the holidays progressed I realised I liked the break from my phone constantly buzzing at me. To the point, that several times I was able to leave my phone in one spot in my house and not have to carry it around with me. I even left it at home on one occasion!! And I didn’t have an anxiety attack.

Starting right

Coming back to work has meant getting back into a routine and trying to get back into a rhythm. It has not been easy especially as school holidays are still going on and I am juggling the needs of my kids with my business (nothing new there). But the thing I am most excited about is setting some goals for the first quarter of the year.

I am juggling the needs of my kids with my business

A time for reflection

I looked back at the some of the goals that I set in a blog post in January 2018. I am happy to say that they were either achieved, adapted (due to the ever changing nature of the business) or I made a big dent in them.

2018 Goals:

•  Grow our birthday cake reminder service. I want to double our list by June 2018. I had to pull back on this one as the systems we use were not supporting the numbers we had and our customer experience was suffering.
• Relaunch our branded cupcakes. In 2017 we put our branded cupcakes on the back burner to focus on another project (blog post to come). 2018 is all about our cupcakes. Done and dusted, our corporate orders have been flowing steadily in and the new web page looks amazing.
• Get my head around Facebook and Instagram advertising. I dabbled in some advertising last year but now it is time to get serious and spend some time learning the ropes. I have come full circle with this one and shifted my focus to google adwords instead. I have hired someone to do some advertising for me and it is getting some good results.
• Go full steam ahead with our emailing campaign (more on this in another blog post). This also involves a new CRM which complements this goal (so excited about this one). I did some hard yards on this one and got some mixed results. We had some great results on some campaigns and not much on others. It was a big learning curve and I am looking to explore this option again in 2019 once I have more man power to tackle the responses.
• Blog, blog, blog I have been so much better on this one. I actually wrote a lot more than I posted.
• Put some serious time into my procedures and manual so it will be less pressure as we grow. This is one of the items I did not set a goal for in 2017 and therefore not much has been done. My kitchen procedures have come along in leaps and bounds. I have taken it as far as it can go for now until we have more staff and our own space.
• My own kitchen space (this one is in the dream phase at the moment lol) We got serious about a few kitchen spaces only to have them snapped away. But it will not be far away!! Given that this one was a very lofty goal, I am happy with the progress we have made.

2019 will be an entirely new beast and needs some serious consideration to get to where we want by 2020. I have been getting acquainted with the book “Traction” and I am going to be using the strategies and systems they use. It will take a while to get it off the ground but it will happen. I have found some wonderful support from fellow business owners in 2018 and I intend to utilise their experience and help this year. Goals will be set in due course and big changes are on the horizon. Are you coming along for the ride?