I watched this winter as a business that had historically been closed in the winter decided to remain open.  This is a thriving business with a large, loyal clientele.  Because of the business they’re in, there should have been little difference between summer and winter levels of business.  

The problem was, nobody knew they were open.  They didn’t advertise.  They didn’t do a mailing to let their customers know they had decided to remain open.  They didn’t even hang a huge banner on their building saying, “Open This Winter.”  Nothing.

So what would you predict happened to their winter business?  Of course.  It was in the dumper.  

The risk you run in all this, is that you begin to make judgements based on what just happened.  You start to say, “Well, winter really isn’t  a good season for us.  We just don’t have the traffic to justify staying open.  Summer’s good, but not winter.”  Or maybe you go down this road:  ”No, we tried it.  It just didn’t work out.  We were open all winter and hardly did anything.  It just wasn’t worth it.”

While those statements are all true, they ignore the fact that the “trial” period was horribly skewed towards not working.  In other words, “We gave it a half baked effort and it didn’t work.”  That’s certainly a more accurate statement than the first few.  It at least leaves the door open to try again, giving it your best effort.

The moral to this story is that before you say, “That didn’t work,” you need to  be sure you gave it your best effort.  Nothing works if you don’t put anything into it in the first place.    It’s like the old saw, “It’s funny.  The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.”  ’Nough said.