Celebrating Successes

If you're running your own small business things can sometimes feel challenging. You could be the one doing all of the work - or maybe it just feels that way - and when you've a lot on and life is getting busy it can occasionally feel like an uphill struggle. One of the things that we can do to bring back the joy of your small business is to celebrate your successes and look at how far you've come.

Identify your successes

This sounds obvious but knowing what your version of success looks like is the first step to being able to celebrate it. And importantly everyone's measure of success is different.

If you've just started to pursue your craft business and you expect to make sales from the off, then it can be easy to get down-heartened if that doesn't happen straight away. If you're clear about your goals it's easier to be proud of achieving them, and they shouldn't all be financial. Have you written a business plan? If so go back to that and see what you set out to achieve. If you wanted to attend your first craft fair, grow your following on social media, meet a network of like-minded creative people or spend your free time creating rather than staring at the telly - those are all legitimate goals that you can work on, and probably already have achieved which counts for something to celebrate. If you're building the right community and have people commenting on your social media posts and they're telling other people about your stuff, you're already half way to improving your sales. Or maybe it's something else you've achieved, if you've worked hard on updating your packaging, created a new brand for your small business, or started something new relating to your new business, start to tell people about it. People love to hear about the things you're proud of and they'll be happy for you, which is always nice.

Turn to your support network

Friends and family are so important to small businesses. If you don't want to admit to the world that you're having a hard time then they are usually the people we turn to. And of course they are happy for you to do that, but they'll want to celebrate your successes too. If you've just had a new sale or a five star review then phone up someone that's supported you through a tough time to tell them the good news. We all need a bit of a lift!

A sense of perspective

It's tricky when there's just you to get a perspective on problems that you're having in your business. Whether that's a lack of sales, customer complaints, or a dip in motivation, they're all problems that everyone faces from time to time and what's key is how you face that. If you believe everyone's social media feed they have great success all of the time, but that's just not true. Being a small business can be a lot about motivation and maintaining momentum, so little wins are great things to keep you going. It's also becoming more common to talk about the hard times on social media too, so if you're looking for a bit of extra support or a celebration of your small successes it can help to reach out to those online too - if you're comfortable with it.

Treat yourself

What is your idea of a treat? Use achieving goals as a reason to treat yourself. We're not talking about spending your hard earned cash, but maybe taking time out, having a piece of cake (preferably with a candle!) or doing a happy dance. Whatever you think marks something as being special do it. And make it a habit. If you're always doing a little dance you'll start to notice how many successes you're actually having.

Take time to evaluate

And last but not least make sure you're taking time to evaluate how things are going. Celebrating everything you've done well is absolutely the right thing to do, but if there's something that's not working then change it. That's the joy of running your own small business, the agility and compassion of being a human being making things with your hands, and with control of your output is what makes you special.

So, on completion of a new blog post, we're off to do a happy dance! Keep your spirits up have faith in yourself and your business. You are your biggest advocate.