Post #1: 2021 Year in Review
Well, that was quite a year! 2021 didn’t go as we originally planned. But over the Christmas break we took some time to reflect and review our year.
The main resource we used was the Year in Review Guide from Janine Deanna. We selected the key areas we want to focus on and then created an agenda for our meeting. Our review took us around an hour and provided invaluable insight into what we needed to focus on in 2022. Here are the highlights from our review:
Reflect
Personal highlights: a few highlights included our first camping trip, our vacation in Fairmont and Jim’s 50th birthday
Business highlights: a few highlights included our first article in the Calgary Herald, the launch of our Influencer Program and bottling our second vintage of wine
Financial review: our financials weren’t complete for 2021 when we met so we deferred this review until the end of January
Inventory review: 2019 Riesling 42% of inventory sold in 2021 (85% sold to date), 2017 Crossroads red blend 31% of inventory sold in 2021 (64% sold to date)
Our vacation to Fairmont
Our first Calgary Herald article by Shelley Boettcher
Jim’s 50th birthday
Our Fall 2021 Influencer Box
Review
Revisit annual goals: The review of our goals was a big eye opener for us. We set 3 business goals at the start of 2021, and it was clear that we didn’t revisit them throughout the year. When reviewing our goals, we realized that we didn’t even know what one of them meant anymore. We were officially those people that wrote down annual goals and somehow expected to just magically reach them without putting a plan in place.
Frustrations and challenges: While we identified several frustrations this past year (hello Covid), we determined that our main challenge was balancing our full-time jobs, our family and Hello Someday Wine.
Celebrate
Best of the year: buying a trailer, our trip to Banff, increasing our number of wines from 2 to 4 and having our wine in 2 restaurants in Calgary
New habits to cultivate: regular planning and review meetings to monitor our goals
What we want more of: consistency
What we want less of: feeling that we don’t have the right work/life balance
Our new (to us) trailer!
Our 2020 Syrah
The top of the Banff Gondola
Dinner at The Nash
Key Takeaways
So what did we learn from all of this? Our key takeaways were:
Keep doing: we want to keep sharing our story and our journey, and we want to increase the number of stores and restaurants that carry our wine
Lessons learned: we need to identify, track and measure our goals, and we need to meet on a consistent basis to review those goals and our progress
And that wraps up the summary of our 2021 year in review! If you have a business, have you completed a year in review? Let us know below!