​When it comes to improving your small business profit, there is an almost unlimited number of resources available for retailers, small-batch manufacturers, and makers. Type a question into your search box and answer-after-answer awaits.

But do you want to know all the information about running a profitable inventory-based business that exists online?

Of course not! It’s humanly impossible.

​The speed of retail is relentless.

If you’re juggling seasonal assortments, each on their unique journey within the merchandise lifecycle, it’s easy to keep charging ahead. To move on to the next season, to design the next collection, and to assort the next product line.

You’re a merchant who’s ready to go up but I hope you’re also ready to look back.

Managing different product lines across multiple seasons is enough to throw any new merchant off their game. That’s why a typical onboarding timeline in our industry is one whole year!

It’s takes the operational repetition of four major retail seasons — winter, spring, summer, and fall — to get the hang of what it’s like to manage the lifecycle of products.

My most downloaded resource for 2018 and 2019 has been a 14-point checklist on how to sell slow-moving inventory at full retail price. (If you don't have it, it's linked below.)

Inventory, styles, trends, and products come and go. Some faster than others.

Confession time: I’m a planner through and through. How about you?

Whether you like to plan like I do, prefer to keep your schedule loose and flexible, or anywhere in between, I’m sure you’ve also felt the driving need to work “on” your business more so you can take it further, faster.

Enter the practice of time blocking, which organizes your day into time slots.

This works really, really well until it doesn’t.

I'm listening! I hear that you have more work to do but not enough time to do it. I see that you work hard but feel like you don't have the results to show.

I suspect that the culprit is the expectations you set to be 100% productive 100% of the time.

You see, productivity loves your work products — any kind of work product. BUT it can’t distinguish between work that contributes to your profit and work that distracts you from achieving your goals. It just likes to see you busy.

It’s no wonder that any work-related “free” time you have gets eaten up quickly.

​During a time when every merchant and business owner I know is setting big goals for the new retail season, I'm doing something else.

I’m focusing on habits and think you should be too.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the value of goal setting. I do it myself. I even teach merchants how to do it more effectively.

But I do think you’ll have an easier time reaching your goals if you focus on the mundane, repetitive, perhaps boring habits that make achieving your goals a foregone conclusion.

​Look, if you want to sell more this holiday season, then stop scrolling and pay attention.

What I’m about to teach can help you transform an uncontrollable, busy, and blur of a holiday selling season into 13 weeks of profits.

Listen, everyone knows that when you have an uptick in customer traffic you have the potential to sell more, and when you sell more you make more.

​But what most small businesses don’t know is that you don't have to wait for the holidays to make the most out of the Golden Quarter.

​I’m curious… as you shape the future of your business, what does your big picture include?

To be honest, you could hire an employee or manager to help you get unstuck from being in the daily work weeds. Or you could set up work boundaries and enforce them to protect your calendar from getting overrun with distractions.

But that’s not going to give you the blueprint you need to move forward with confidence while maintaining the creative control you crave.

Enter strategic thinking for retailers and makers.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself?

Spoiler alert: (Even) I hate this question!
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Hindsight is 20/20. It gives us a less tender opportunity to learn from past mistakes, oversights, and failures. As someone who’s fascinated but learning from her own history, I know there’s more to get out of hindsight — like learning how to fail up.

A common thread that connects business owners and CEOs across all organizations, in all industries — regardless of business size — is a desire for both confidence and clarity.

The leadership role can feel isolating. It takes a lot of work to hold down the fort, to have or find answers to your challenging business questions, and to take big leaps toward growth.

The reality is that many things out of your control. But there’s a lot more you can sway… if you know how.

We’re entering a selling season when the reasons for buying are broader than they are during other times of the year.

Between seasonal holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, non-holiday seasonality associated with school graduation and sports, and the general energy that comes from experiencing warm weather, customers open their wallets more freely since fourth quarter.

It’s no wonder that pop-up events and outdoor markets are aplenty this time of year.

So how are you event planning for optimal profit?

When I started working in a retail buying office, I found it to be an exciting time in my life. I adored being part of the decision-making that shaped what customers bought. Specifically, I enjoyed learning how to understand my customers so deeply that I could shop of them — thousands and thousands of them.

What you and I have in common is that we excel at translating visual or emotional inspiration into something a customer will pay for. We also have strong presentation skills — from visual communication to store merchandising to selling. Like you, I love this large portion of the job being a merchant!
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During this early part of my career, I could have left the rest of the merchant role behind. Believe me when I tell you, I tried and here’s how it went!

There are a handful of essential questions I always ask clients and students because they effectively reveal valuable information about a business like its size, general revenue bracket , and state of growth.

When it comes to receiving business support as an entrepreneur or small business owner, sharing as much as you can about your operations is more revealing —​ and actionable — than sharing how much annual revenue your brand drives.

So here’s the million dollar question...

Paper planners and desk-sized calendars are popular companions to the kickoff of any new year. They represent fresh starts, new beginnings, and goal setting.

I’m curious — did you start the year with business goals, and a new planner or journal in hand? More importantly, are you still planning with the same level of commitment you had earlier in the year?

When it comes to mastering accountability, entrepreneurs often think the answer lies in time management.

​It’s easy to believe that if we manage our time better, we wouldn’t feel behind in our work and could actually plan some personal time off.

If you have business successes to celebrate and still feel overwhelmed by work or have a hard time getting clear about where your business is going, you might be a Merchant Maverick.

As one of the Retail Success Styles, Merchant Mavericks make up about one third of the Merchant Method community.

While what you’ve done in the past won’t necessarily get you the business results you want in the future, you can use your success style to unlock your next chapter of business growth.

Two heads are better than one but it takes intention and patience to work in partnership successfully.

Whether your business partnership means co-owning your brand, working with multiple vendors, or both, all of these require regular maintenance to keep them high functioning, valuable, and gratifying.

But what about when you’re in a partnership that’s headed in the wrong direction? What do you do about it then?

There’s so much more to planning than time management... but I’m pretty sure you know this!

You juggle finances to buy inventory or raw materials. You shift around items on your to-do list to meet your most urgent deadlines. You put off making personal appointments because there are competing deadlines tied to the urgency of seasonal selling.

You juggle like a pro!

But… are you planning so you can get ahead of the game or are you scrambling to keep up?

When I started consulting over six years ago, one of the most popular types of business questions I’d get asked was about marketing. It’s remains one of the top five questions I’m asked about every year.

Marketing, as a critical business function, is just as broad a practice as it is deep — meaning, there are many important moving parts. Luckily, for the both of us, there are also plenty of valuable resources for small and medium sized businesses.

Yet despite the tips, tricks, and tactics available at our fingertips, Merchants continue to struggle with marketing their businesses for one main reason — marketing is NOT merchandising.

I remember my first manager-level role — one with employees to train, develop, and retrain should performance fall below expectations. I loved it when my team and I were like a well-oiled machine and never thought about how I would feel if we weren’t.

So I was unprepared when my own manager asked me to have a difficult conversation with an employee whom she suspected was stealing from the business. Whether or not I was prepared, it was a conversation I had to have.

The question I get asked time and time again is — “What should I charge for my products because I need to make more money?”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you need to know that making more money does NOT start with pricing.

Every indie retailer and maker that I’ve worked with has one thing in common — a fear of being bored in their work.

Raise your hand if this is you too!

Whether you're ready to share this publicly or suffer in silence, you probably feel that you need to somehow up your marketing game — whether it be getting more attention on social media, driving traffic to your ecommerce site, or developing new contacts now that might turn into business later (read: business development).

Amiright?!?

What catches a customer’s attention — and hopefully a share of their wallet — changes constantly and the tides of merchandising, marketing, and selling quickly follow suit.

What was once a clever idea to drive customer traffic to a store is now the starting price to get a customer’s attention. Hopefully you hold it long enough for them to really look at what you’ve got to sell.