What are your biggest accomplishments of 2023? ‌🏆

[tranguyen]

It's me again, gang 👋

It might feel too early to start thinking about it but it is never the wrong time to celebrate your own wins. Which is why this week, we are setting out to find out:

What are your biggest accomplishments of 2023?

It can be accomplishing a personal goal or overcoming a business challenges; it can be big or small — we want to hear it all!

For me, it has been such a joy to kickoff our first Mentorship Program this year ❤️. Outside of work, I also got the opportunity to write my first film introduction and interview the director as part of a film festival in Dublin.

Can't wait to read all your replies 🎉  

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This question is part our Season of Giving celebration. Keep an eye on the Seller Community in the coming weeks for more festive season content and the opportunity to be part of an exciting event. More to come! 

[DLRosenberg]

What a great question and honestly an important one. It's important to take a second and get out of day-to-day survival mode. Hopefully I'm not the only one that feels like they are in survival mode. Honestly- that's how it's been feeling. This year has been pretty rough. I have a business partner and they have been going through it this year. Loss of parents, a divorce.. literally pretty much anything that could go wrong has, and I've been trying to support and keep things going, So the two of us getting through this year with a thriving business is enough.

BUT - here are some other wins for us:

Took the lead on a new festival for our Village called Amityville's Haunted Harvest. We had 30+ vendors, Coney Island Entertainment, and the local radio station. Traffic was EXCELLENT and the vendors all did well. We had a KILLER weekend from it and we're already coordinating next year.

Hosted a pretty big author up from NC to visit our bookshop, which is nearing it's first birthday.

Collaboration with a pretty popular, local apparel brand- sold 300 sweatshirts with our logo on it and sold out online in 4 minutes.

With the help of our accountant created our own 401k plan and were able to offer 2 of our employees profit sharing.

[mpmpmp22]

@DLRosenberg 2023 has definitely been rough for a lot of folks and I am sorry to hear that you have been experiencing some downtimes this year. I'm really hopeful that the new year brings a lot more joy into everything!

I also wanted to celebrate your wins, because it's awesome to see what y'all accomplished! Even with everything that you and your business partner faced, you still achieved a lot and that should be celebrated! Just goes to show how resilient we really are and you should be proud of yourself for this! 

[MudFire_Deanna]

Ooof - 2022 was a dramatic health scare for my wife that led us into 2023 which was rocky returning to some staff that had on-boarded without us even being here physically. Using Square tools to run our business from a hospital was an accomplishment of sorts but our greater accomplishment was returning to the business in real time and paying off our 10 year promissory note for the business - we now own 100% of MudFire. I am super proud that we expanded our studio capacity this summer by building new shelving, storage areas, and increased capacity by 50 people. I was proud that I was able to do that construction and that our ideas panned out to mean more profit. We also both were able to take a raise!

One a personal level - I have been struggling personally with gender representation, how I am categorized as a non-binary person, how many behaviors are categorized by others and who has permissions to traffic in certain language like being direct for example or how people relate to me in my physical body. This has been a path of self-discovery that has impacted my role business at the same time and has reconnected me to daily conversations in the business as I set a goal for myself to increase curiosity and have more conversations which is something I missed in 2022 but has also been positive to preserving my humanness if that makes sense. In a year of difficult discourse during PRIDE and just in the political landscape it is easy to begin to see yourself as a target not a person. Until knowing Square visibility in my business was something I wasn't sure was positive and many of y'all know through conversations in other threads this years PRIDE invisibility made those feelings come up again - not just in Square but with many brands facing boycotts and criticism for including people like me as friends and customers - being a business owner who is someone brands are afraid to highlight is an odd predicament to be in for sure because in large part here I am my brand at the studio.

[mpmpmp22]

@MudFire_Deanna Wow you should be super proud of what you were able to accomplish given all of the obstacles and adversity that you faced! 

Thank you for sharing your story, and sorry to hear that you're facing criticism for being who you are. Sending a lot of love your way and rooting for you! 🌻

[Lovewell]

Biggest accomplishment: 

-got a huge grip on our finances! 

- growing our team 

- invested in our community in so many different ways 

- we SURVIVED! Crazy world and all. 

[mpmpmp22]

so many wins worth celebrating! 

[SiBellebeauty]

I LOVE this!

This question has come at the perfect time as we have just won Best Beauty Salon in Essex. One of my biggest achievements to date. Now being able to promote myself and my salon team as an award winning salon is incredible. 
I am incredibly grateful and excited to see where else I can push my business in this final quarter.

[mpmpmp22]

Big congrats!! 

[sugarlab]

Getting to be on Holiday Baking Championship season 10! I'm nervous to have everyone watch but it was such an amazing experience. This year hasn't been what I wanted it to be, but I'm hoping I can take this momentum into 2024 and have a great year!

[mpmpmp22]

@sugarlab that is incredible!! Excited to see 🙂 

[Twpchair]

How cool is that though! Congrats! I understand having rough years mine was this year dealing with family issues and health issues. I think or hope that's all done with! Keep up the great work!

[alexandriak]

Started a second business in March. It was pretty self sufficient almost immediately. I just opened two more display locations in a vendor style business last week to grow this business in a more manageable way while still running my first business. 

Upgraded my loyalty program to Square's system. loving it so far. 

Sales are up for 2023 too and we're meeting or exceeding sales goals each month.

[mpmpmp22]

@alexandriak nice work on all of this growth! Definitely so cool to see!

[alexandriak]

thank you!! Growing a second business while running the first has been interesting so far. That's for sure!

[Twpchair]

Congratulations! I love to hear about small businesses growing as sometimes I feel we're being squeezed out! Keep on rolling!

[rtfulk]

I guess this would be a business and personal accomplishment for me. After 14 months we finally got our USTPO trademark for our business. The personal side of it, I wanted to do the process myself without a lawyer, took a little time filling out the form and learning a little bit of legal speak. I only got 1 office action and was able to do a quick amend and got it approved.

The other accomplishment would be we have spent months on our booth redesign for the fairs. Studies show at fairs it takes about 30 seconds for someone to walk by your booth, so we have 30 seconds to grab that potential customers attention.

We had to design something that was 1. Mobile, 2. Fast setup and teardown, 3. Doesn’t take up too much space in out trailer.

I think we have done a great job, we used some of the setup in Texas, some is still being custom made, but our booth looks like a small store now and we got several comments on how we stood out from the others. I will be glad when we get everything in and can do a full setup.

The last thing we sell children’s clothing, so this year we became sponsors to St. Jude and Shriners Hospital.

[mpmpmp22]

Big accomplishments! Going through the trademark process by yourself is no easy feat! 

Very cool to hear how you're giving back to your community too 🙂 

[alexandriak]

great job on the trademark!!

My second trademark is going to be published for any opposition soon, and as long as there are no issues I should have it by years end.

[rtfulk]

@alexandriak , When ours went into publish for opposition, I was checking ours daily. 🙂

[alexandriak]

That will also be me 😂