Editor's Forum: Happy New Year!

While a certain unnamed airline is not much better than sitting on crates with seatbelts, if you get one of the eight big comfy seats in the front, it’s not half bad. The flight from Dallas to L.A. was too short to sleep and too long for my latest iPad game addiction—Speed Buggy Racing 2—but it was just enough time to think about the show in its entirety. I say entirety because, when we first revived KnowledgeFest at the Gaylord Texan in 2009, our goal was just to get people there. And we accomplished that.

Today, it’s a different landscape. KnowledgeFest is THE established destination for industry professionals who want to improve their skills or grow their business. It’s also THE established venue for vendors that want to talk to an audience of which 100 percent of attendees are either purchasers or purchasing influencers. And for the last few years, even reps and distributors have come in from the cold and become active participants in the industry outside their territories.

In short, KnowledgeFest has brought us all together. MEA has responded to the industry with high-value education, larger venues, additional locations and the ability to let vendors do more to create and strengthen relations with attending industry pros. And through all this, the Dallas event has become the point at which we evaluate our progress over the last 12 months and see how we measure up with other professionals through networking. It’s also the beginning of a new cycle as we stock up on ideas, knowledge and expertise to keep progressing.

If that doesn’t symbolize a new year for our industry, what does? Companies and even governments determine their fiscal year schedule based on industry or geography, starting in January, March, April or October. I daresay our industry year starts in August.

So what does one do to ring in the new year? Step one is done: we take stock of our accomplishments and shortcomings. Step two is also checked off: we celebrate. The Industry Awards are our celebration recognizing the best of what we have to offer.

Step three of the list of new-year activities is to plan for—and resolve to commit to—how we will improve ourselves for the next year. And while we are speaking of professional development in this context, for many of us, it also extends to home as they must maintain a certain balance (see my editorial from last month.)

When you make a resolution, especially based on the information you’ve taken from KnowledgeFest, you have to make a list. Why is this important? Because the human tendency—and fallacy—is to trust that what we’ve learned will somehow magically be absorbed, improving our daily routines through osmosis and fairy dust. But an object in motion tends to stay in motion. If we don’t take specific measures to interrupt routines and insert new information, we are just going to keep going through the same unprofitable or inefficient motions, fairy dust or no.

When we market KnowledgeFest, we call out three main components: education, networking and awareness. So start your list with these as the three areas.

Education: What did you learn for yourself? What did you learn that could help others?

Networking: What personal connections did you make? What group or support connections did you make, whether it’s with peers, reps or vendors?

Awareness: What did you learn that affects your store? What did you learn that affects your industry?

Now, make lists of what to improve. And while you’re doing it, take my 3 B’s into consideration:

Be realistic, but not pessimistic. It doesn’t make sense to commit to a remodel or significant employee raises if the numbers don’t support it. At the same time, don’t let that reality stop you from taking some steps toward positive change. Start with smaller projects or incremental increases. Taking action builds positive energy and will do a lot for store morale.

Break down big objectives into smaller goals. I wrote about the difference between goals and objectives in the April 2019 issue of Mobile Electronics. The latter is the big picture, and multiples of the former are the steps to help you reach your objective. Be sure that your resolutions are manageable enough to keep yourself and your staff motivated to achieve them.

Be flexible with behavior-related resolutions. If you resolve to improve your productivity through better time management for example, there will be days when you slip back into your old ways. This is the point at which many resolutions fail. Instead, forgive yourself and get back on the horse.

My resolution for our industry’s new year is to improve my skill with multimedia. I know a lot of you have the same objective. If so, let’s get together at the next “New Year” in Dallas and compare notes!