Ben Franklin once said, “If You Fail to Plan, You Are Planning to Fail!” Yes, but who last year right before Christmas, Holiday Celebrations and New Years was planning for Covid-19 changing our lives…Not me. This year though as we go into Christmas, Holiday Celebrations and enter 2021, I am thinking about Covid-19 and what I am going to do to plan survive and be ready to thrive in our new world in 2021.

I am going to approach this with a 3 part plan: 1. Use 2020 Hindsight, 2. Celebrate All Wins, 3. 1 + 2 to Plan for 2021.

1. Use 2020 Hindsight

Start by debriefing 2020, What did you do right that worked for Your Business and/or You? For me one of the things I did was when the lock down ended I offered my guests the same schedule I had before the pandemic. This allowed me not to be overwhelmed and also keep our business from having dips after being overwhelmed or over worked. I also found guests were happy to wait a little longer knowing we had the time and energy to sanitize everything. The second thing with 2020 hindsight is the truth that if you have not given up on our industry, no matter what happened to your business, that is success! Because no one and no business could have planned to survive a pandemic.

2. Celebrate All Wins

Start with just being in our industry as a productive member as a win. Some of the biggest icons in our industry have lost iconic salons, entire avenues of our industry are on pause (no hairdressers are working on Broadway), Artists and Educators are not doing big events or education. Everywhere we look we know someone who is not winning the way they were before, including me and probably you too. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have wins every day! Every guest that sits in our chairs, is a win. Every guest we touch, is a win. I haven’t hugged my mother, but I have touched a guest who has shared they have experienced the same lack of touch, except in our safe, sanitized, professional environment. Now more than ever our industry’s touch is a win for all. From the new talents we have learned, to the new ways we have learned how we can share experiences or ideas (Zoom), to the extra time we have had with people or ourselves, we can look for wins and make sure we celebrate all of them. How do I celebrate them? By acknowledging I just did something good, not just my job, even taking a moment and saying to myself, or someone that I love, that I did something good! And not just let it go by. For me it is giving myself a star not a checkmark.

3. 1 + 2 to Plan For 2021

Let’s start with #1, What did we learn from hindsight? Did we buy too much toilet paper? What did we wish we had done sooner? What would we do again? What are we going to change? What are we going to stop that we are doing? #2, What wins do we need to keep? Are we celebrating wins in a way that helps us build success and momentum? Do you need to find a new way to celebrate? What is a Win for Me in 2021? How do I want to make that Win Happen in the time of Covid-19?

For me I am planning for failure and working for success. This doesn’t mean failure of my business, because I am not planning to fail, it means if things get worse before they get better. A good analogy, is I am building my plane to fly in BAD weather, because it will be great in good weather. I know in this a crazy world today, a win can be waking up and feeling good, for us as beauty professionals with even a small win can get us up and create a wave of wins! Our touch makes people feel good with 1 touch that gets 2 wins, at a time.