The year in review part 1: The most valuable business lessons I’ve learned

I can say that 2014 was an incredible year and a challenging one at times. It feels like it has gone by in double speed with everything that has happened, like living in L.A. for a while, switching from This chick’s got style to CHAPTER FRIDAY and then winning an award and dealing with RSI, which meant my mind and body weren’t always aligned.

Looking back, I’m feeling grateful for the big steps that I’ve made together with you and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I love reflecting on everything that’s happened in a year as a way to close that chapter. So leading up to the New Year, me and you are going to go over some of the most noteworthy things have happened.

Today I’m writing down some of the business lessons I’ve learned in 2014, followed up by an article with some of the personal lessons. Here we go!

Managing and planning is worth the time. With the switch to CHAPTER FRIDAY, my team has grown. It now consists of a content manager, a writing intern and a photography intern, which means I don’t only need to manage my own thoughts, tasks and agenda. As ‘easy’ as it might seem to simply hand over to-do lists, everyone delivers better work and feels more appreciated when we discuss more detailed what the intention of each article or task is. Planning ahead and making sure everyone is on the same page takes quite some time, but we’ll get you better results and a more cohesive team.

Don’t answer with ‘Yes, but…’, instead offer a solution. One of our quickest responses to something new is ‘Yes, but…’. It’s easy to tell yourself reasons why a new idea might not work. ’I don’t have the time’, ‘I don’t have the money’, ‘I don’t know how’, ‘Nobody has done it before’ or ‘Everyone is doing it’. It’s OK to discuss obstacles, but do so while offering insights and solutions on how to solve them rather than just killing off the idea. Innovation requires a positive and practical mind-set.

There are three things I ask myself before I say yes to a project. One is: will it make me smarter? For example, do I get to work with a team of innovative people that will challenge me and allow me to grow. Two is: will it make me happier? Is this project something that makes me better professionally and does it make me smile when I get up in the morning. Third is: is it financially interesting? Is this job something that will give me stability and is it worth investing time and energy in. That’s not to say every job I do has all three of these criteria, but I do try to say yes to projects with at least of two of these ingredients.

Surround myself with the right people. Your work becomes so much better and bigger when you surround yourself with people that have specific talents that complement yours. I need other people to keep you inspired, open minded and to keep a human approach to the project I’m doing or product I’m making.

The difference between success and failure is the decision to keep trying. Failure sucks. But don’t let it be your end destination. Suck it up and start again. Just because something didn’t work out the first time around, doesn’t mean it will never work out. Failure is just one of the stages in between a starting point and a good and successful end result. To deny failure is to deny the nature of any creative process.

Writing all of this down, I realized that there are at least ten more things I could tell you. But I hope for now, this might be helpful to take with you into the New Year and I’d love to hear what one big work lesson was that you learned. Let’s talk in the comments!

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