Dec 27, 2021
The year is coming to an end, and on this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, I’m encouraging you to take a moment and review the year that’s just passed before planning for 2022. Being aware of what we’ve achieved over the last twelve months—and recognizing where we’ve made mistakes—is crucial for understanding where we want to go in the future. Today, I’ll guide you through some ways to make your yearly review effective and motivating so that you can head into the New Year with clear goals and confidence.
First up, I recommend taking the Marie Kondo approach and getting rid of—or at least minimizing—anything in your life that doesn’t spark joy. Ask yourself if you’re still excited by your business and figure out if you need to make changes based on what you’ve learned and experienced over the past year. Then I suggest four stages for reviewing your year—data collection, recognizing milestones, allowing space for mistakes, and setting reasonable goals—which will give you a framework for understanding and celebrating where you are in your business and where you can go in the future. I also revisit the “Start. Stop. Continue” technique as a method of taking stock of your business behaviors and how to manage them to improve your happiness in your work. Finally, I dare all my listeners to choose one goal to focus on for a year, making it the core of their decisions and actions, so that you can see how reviewing and restating our goals can help us bring them to fruition.
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This week on the Amazon Files:
- The importance of taking time for reflection.
- Ask yourself if you’re still excited by your business and being mindful of your mindset.
- Paying attention to what inputs you’re allowing into your life and yourself.
- Get to know your natural rhythm and arrange your day around the hours when you hit your stride.
- Marie Kondo’s ‘sparking joy’ approach.
- Stage #1 of reviewing your year: data collection—decide what aspects of your business you want to review and collect the numbers relating to them.
- Stage #2: recognize milestones—go back through your calendar, note down what you achieved over the past year, and celebrate the milestones you’ve experienced, both big and small.
- Stage #3: allow space for mistakes—make a list of three things maximum that went wrong during the year, think about why they happened, and write down a suggestion for how you can change it or prevent it from happening again. And don’t judge yourself for it - own it.
- An example of stage #3 from my own life.
- Stage #4: set reasonable goals—when you’re thinking about your goals for the next year, think about if you have the resources to reasonably achieve them before writing them down.
- Revisiting your perfect world, making changes based on your current needs and desires, then figuring out what you need to do to make this world a reality.
- How to use the “Start, Stop, and Continue” technique.
- Setting one goal for your business this year and following it to completion.
- Remembering why you set your goals and figuring out what you’re willing to sacrifice to meet them.
- The accountability that comes with sharing your goals with others.
“Whatever you put in, in your mind, in your heart, in your emotions, in your body - that’s what comes out. That’s the kind of energy that comes out of your body and out of your mouth and out of your heart and out of your soul.”
- Kristin Ostrander
Quotes:
“We need someone to give us what I call the ‘slug and a hug,’ or the ‘kiss and a slap,’ where you need the tough love, but you also need the gentle forgiveness of yourself and others.”
“We do need to open our eyes, and be aware of our year and see where we want to go next year.”
“If you’re in a state of mind where things are heavy and hard and overwhelming and stressful, and maybe that’s affecting your sleep or your mood or things like that, the last thing we want to be doing is putting more negative energy into that space.”
“Let’s be real, paying bills does not bring me joy. And I can’t just get rid of them because I don’t like them. However, you can make the experience of doing something that you don’t enjoy more enjoyable by just being aware of it, getting it out of the way, doing it at a time in your day that is the best time for you.”
“If you’re not much of a data collector, you need to become one because this is a business skill that we all need. If we want to grow our profit, we need to know what our profit is, in order to grow it, do we not?”
“We are hard-wired to look at the negative most of the time and not celebrating all of the great things that we’ve done. I mean, most especially women tend to point out all of the things that we’ve done wrong, or the bad things, or the things we’re not good at. We’re not really great at walking up to the plate and saying, ‘I’m great at XYZ.’”
“We look at what went wrong so that we don’t repeat mistakes, so that we don’t lose money, so that we don’t run in fear all of the time and say, ‘Oh, I’ll never do that again.’”
“We all should be in growth mode.”
“I made some mistakes. They weren’t pretty. But that doesn’t have to dictate the rest of my life or the rest of my business.”
“If you want to make more revenue, you’re going to have to increase either your profit margin or the capital that you’re spending on set inventory in order to increase it. It’s just, you know, some basic simple math.”
“You don’t always have to make tons of money off your first bundle, it’s just getting used to the process. And once you know how to list, once you know detuned exemptions, once you get your bundle brand, things like that, then you can get all the logistics out of the way and then start to be creative.”
“That’s my purpose. That’s my ‘why’. That’s why I sit in front of this camera and this microphone every single week, because it brings me joy to see all of you succeeding, even if it’s baby steps.”
“You’re ten times more likely to hit a goal that you write down and share with someone else.”
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Grow Your Amazon Business!
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword REVIEW to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.