Hey. It’s Bob Negen. In this episode of Real Retail TV, we’re going to explore a mindset, a holiday money making mindset.

So I’m coming to you from downtown Grand Haven, and I thought I’d come outside because I absolutely love these late fall days. The leaves are changing. The sky is gray. The lake is big.

So I thought I would share it with you here. But let’s talk about mindset. You know, mindset in business and in life, and in this case, in the holiday season, we’ll determine your outcome. Your results come from how you think and what you do, and how you think determines what you do.

So when you go into the holidays, if you have the right mindset, the probability that you have a successful holiday goes way, way up.

So the first thing I want you to consider when you start to think about the holidays, and now is the time to start thinking about the holidays, is this idea of commitment.

That there is an understanding that the holidays, there will be times when it is long. There will be times when it is hard. There are times when you will be tired.

But that’s okay. You’re big enough. You’re bad enough. You’re bold enough to deal with it.

You can do this. This whole idea of I can do this will go a long ways because you want to be able to work Hard in and on your business in the holidays and still have a life. Right? You still have a family that expects you to participate.

You still want to participate in parties and in social events with your friends. And so it’s going to there. There’s going to be moments when you don’t want to do it, but that’s okay.

You’ve chosen to do it. You know, I’ve run a couple of, half marathons, never a full marathon. Thank goodness. And I’ve done a lot of backpacking.

And, you know, when you start to when you make a commitment to running a half marathon or when you commitment to make a commitment to going on a long, hard backpacking trip. You know that there are going to be times when it’s difficult, but it’s part of the territory. You accept it. And not only do you accept it, but you embrace it.

And that’s what I’m suggesting. Go into this holiday season with a joyous yet determined attitude that you’re going to do everything you can for your business, yet still retain the spirit of the holiday for your family and friends.

But then when it comes down to this commitment and doing the right things to make the most money, the mindset of commitment to making the most of the opportunities, there’s a couple of things I’d like to explore. First of all, there’s your store hours.

You cannot sell through a closed door.

And I am here in downtown Grand Haven, and I’m gonna share a story that last year, I came downtown in December on a Sunday. I wanted to do a little shopping, and fully a third of the stores were closed.

It was maddening. I wanted to shop. Many of them were nice stores that I would have loved to have gone into, but I couldn’t. Why?

Because they weren’t open. And that’s the first thing that I wanna share is that you cannot Hi, Jill. Hey. Good.

Good. You cannot sell through a closed door. Now, the most common excuse for not being open on Sundays, even during the holidays, is that I don’t have team, I don’t have enough staff members, or I need to have a day off for myself. And what I’m suggesting is that this is the problem is a skill or a lack of skills.

Really, what you need to do is you need to recruit now, Have a deep enough bench that You can fully staff your stores, which leads to the next mistake that I see people make in this idea of having a success mindset for the holidays, and that is have enough people right now. Call the people who have worked for you in the past. Call your part time seasonal summer people. Call everybody who has worked for you in the past and say, hey, would you like a few hours this holiday season? Because guess what?

You can keep longer hours and you can make more money, and you want to protect yourself from the possibility that COVID is going to go around, that the flu is going to go around. So when you start to think about this determined success mindset, you also recognize that heaven forbid the flu goes through your team in the third week in December. Right? You want to prepare for it. Part of being successful and part of the success mindset is being prepared.

And so the third part of this whole thing is training. You want to create training for your current team, for any part time people that you bring back, any part time people that you bring on. It doesn’t have to be extensive training, but you want to teach them the best sellers. You want to teach them basic selling techniques. You want to give them the skills they need to feel comfortable and confident on the floor. So, again, what are we doing? We’re preparing ourselves for our success.

When I went on a two week backpacking trip, you could bet your bottom dollar that I checked and rechecked and triple checked everything that went in my pack, everything that went that that I needed for food. What I didn’t want to do is get in a week into my trip and find out I was missing something or I’m in the middle of a torrential downpour and I realize that I forgot my raincoat or some sort of rain gear. And this is what I’m suggesting for you too, that really saying I’m going to make the most of this holiday season. I’m going to be prepared for it mentally, and I’m going to have built out everything I need in advance so that if anything goes wrong, I’m ready for it. And training will dramatically decrease the probability or the possibility that you will be served up a surprise. So those three things, if you start thinking about them now, start preparing for them now, You’re going to dramatically increase.

The probability of success this holiday season. So that’s the first thing. And the second part of this conversation is the Pina Colada principle. And you’ve probably heard me talk about this before.

I’ve been sharing with people in our community for years this idea that you are responsible for your traffic. And then Misha Setto, a friend and client, shared one time that whenever it rained in her town, traffic would drop way off. And so what she started to do was serve pina coladas in her store when it rained. So in other words, what was she doing?

She was being proactive about counteracting this, you know, this bad event rain. And so now I call it the pina colada principle. And the pina colada principle merely says you can always find something to do when it’s when conditions aren’t optimal. And so when we talk about the pina colada principle, I want you to think about what can you do.

What kind of promotions can you have in your pocket so that if it is if the weather is lousy, if there’s a giant snowstorm, if you’re on the plains of North Dakota and it starts blowing forty and it’s forty miles, forty degrees below zero, What can what kind of event? What kind of promotion? What can you do?

To immediately counteract That problem.

Could it be a promotion? Could it be a sale? Could it be I don’t know what it could be. That’s up to you and your team and your industry.

But I would encourage you to to recognize that there’s probably going to be a couple of days where Things aren’t going your way. And by having one of these, you know, easy to execute promotions in your product, a traffic driver in your product is a wonderful, wonderful thing to have going for yourself. So think about this. This is another opportunity for you to a d d this with your team.

Ask, discuss, decide. Get them together now and say, look, if there’s a snowstorm or a rainstorm or a flood or whatever it is. If something or or you’re just having a bad season and you need to do something extra to increase your sales, what can we do? Get your team involved with thinking about what you can do. Build out those little in your pocket promotions so that if you do need extra income, if something is happening that is getting in the way of a good day, you can, you know, get it going right away, make it happen and make good things happen. This is all part of that holiday mindset.

The holiday mindset says, I am determined.

I am ready to do this. I am going to do what it takes to make the season be whatever I can make it be. I’m going to be open. I’m going to be ready.

My team is going to be trained. I am going to have promotions. I’m going to have a full promotional calendar, and I’m going to have a couple in my pocket for when I need them. And if you go into the holiday season with these things in place, with the mindset of you’re gonna make it happen, I guarantee you’re going to have a good Holiday season.

Alright. Well, I hope that you found this helpful. I’m Bob Negen. I’m coming to you from downtown Grand Haven. We’ll see you next week.