The Biggest Mistake that a Gift Business Can Make

The Biggest Mistake a Gift Business Can Make

Everyone in business — regardless of the industry or whether it was 1919 or 2019 — makes mistakes.

Someone once said that “The biggest mistake a small business can make is to think like a small business.”

That is indeed a mistake.  Unless we think big, we will always continue to remain small.  But personally, I don’t think it is the biggest mistake that a business can make.

To me, the biggest mistake, any of us as business owners can make is to:  Fail to take advantage of what we spent time and money learning.

Let me explain.

Each year, some of you spend a lot of money plus your valuable time attending trade shows and conventions.

You returned home with pages of notes, lots of pictures, and a multitude of ideas.  What did you do with them?

The biggest mistake you can make is to put them in a drawer or stow them away in the back of your brain along with all the ideas you have read and heard through the years.

Ideas are meant to be used.  To be massaged so that they fit your own individual situation and part of the country.

Not all of us have the same kind of business with the same kinds of customers.  Ideas that work for someone in California may not work the same way for someone in New York.  They may not even work the same way for someone in the opposite end of your state.

For example, I live in the middle of the world’s largest Ponderosa pine forest in Flagstaff, Arizona near the Grand Canyon where casual is the rule. Ideas and even gift types that are popular in more metropolitan Phoenix and Tucson, which has a whole different lifestyle, climate, and scenery, don’t always work the same way up here.

But that doesn’t mean that an idea can’t be massaged and made to work in a different way in my neck of the woods.

Ever since I attended my first gift basket convention many, many years ago in Sacramento, California, I have collected notes and ideas from all over the country.  Some of them could be easily implemented as presented while others wouldn’t work at all or had to be changed to make them work for me.

So take advantage of everything you learn whether at a convention, on a webinar, or in our magazine.  They may not work exactly as presented but can be the beginning of an idea that you massage to make your very own.

Failure to do exactly that is — to me — the biggest mistake a small business of any kind can make.

Until next time.

Your friend and mentor,
Joyce Reid

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