Guess what?

You survived it.

You survived 2020.

That in and of itself deserves a round of applause my friends. So give yourself a pat on the back, grab a drink and celebrate that you made it. We did it. It’s funny because sometimes March 16, 2020 seems so very long ago. It was the day the world shut down – or at least in Florida. But if somebody asked me to describe my year I would actually say it’s been quite a blessing. 

Now I understand that’s not true of everyone. And I don’t take it lightly, that we’re able to find the silver linings this year. Even with the silver linings, this year was still hard for Ira, me, and my team. We’ve had to restructure, reprice, and pull things out of our booty we’ve never done before. But there’s also been so many amazing things about this year, that have made me grateful for the hardship.

So I’m excited and energized as we move into 2021. And I hope you are too. I’ll be sharing three reasons why this year was a blessing in disguise. Not only for me, but also for our company, for our clients for our vendor partners.

2020 Has Given Us Space to Breathe and Reassess

We’ve had a lot more downtime than we would have preferred in the event industry. But early in the summer I realized since everything was settling in lockdown mode I had a lot of time to reassess our business.

There’s so many things I’ve wanted to do for 13 years but never had the time before. Even though I had stepped out of wedding mode, I always seemed to get roped back in.

And that was because we never had time to structure our business in a way that didn’t rope me back in. When I finally got the chance to assess our business, I realized we had to ensure our staff had clear roles and could manage on their own. The truth is I stayed involved for way too long.

So what I love about 2020 was this gift of time and space. None of my clients needed me, none of my staff needed me. Everyone was kind of running on their own tracks. Now we’ve almost completely restructured our business and each of my staff have defined roles. Not only as a wedding planner, but also as their side roles in our business.

So it’s been fun to see how restructuring has given me the space and time to be the visionary I need to be for our company. I need to be the CEO. I need to be the person dreaming and setting goals for the future, not bogged down with the day to day. So it’s been a cool thing that has come out of 2020.

2020 Allowed Me to See the Resilience of My Team

If you’ve ever heard me speak, you’ve heard me talk about my team and how incredible they are to me. I don’t care about the bias, but Blush employs the most incredible human beings on the planet. They want to make our clients dreams come true. They love what they do. And they’re very loyal to me and to Ira and want to see Blush grow.

But you guys, when the lockdown hit in March, we started thinking, “Oh my word, what is going to happen to our business?” This was before we knew about the PPP and the EDL and we didn’t know exactly what kind of reserves we had at the time. But we had to figure out other ways to bring in income and our team stepped up to the plate. It was incredible.

It was so cool to see how many of them reached out to us to say, “What do you need us to do? What else can we be taking on? How can we be getting our face out there more?” Anything! They wanted to do anything they needed to do to be all in.

In a time when the world was crazy, and they had their own family and anxiety to worry about, they were 1,000% on board. They made sure Blush was the very best it could be. Not only during the very initial pandemic, but  for the last eight months.

It’s been incredible to see them take on new roles and exceed my expectations. And I appreciate them so much, that has never changed. But this year, especially, I am so appreciative of having a team that wants to see me and our company succeed. So number two was getting to see the resilience of our team. Seeing them come together to make sure that Blush was here to stay.

2020 Forced the World (and Me) to Slow Down

It’s funny because I enjoy taking vacations when everyone else is also taking a vacation. I don’t enjoy taking a week off in October.. I don’t enjoy taking a week off in April during the busy season. It’s not enjoyable, because you have to work so much to leave, and then you come back to complete chaos. So I always try to take my vacations between Christmas and New Year’s because it’s like, no one’s working. And even if they are they’re not expecting a response.

It’s interesting to me that this year was like an extended vacation. Right? It felt so peaceful at times. Of course, those anxieties were high. But it wasn’t only my business, or Florida, or the United States – the entire world had shut down. And while that’s insane, all in itself, it was peaceful. It was cool to see everyone stop and slow down and not have anyone need you for anything.

It was this several months of peacefulness. Did it not feel like things were opening  back up you’re like, “Whoa, I don’t know that I want my old life back.” Not that there was anything wrong with my old life. But there were certain things about the way we did business or the way my personal life was, or things we did as a family that I was going to miss. I loved slowing down.

Finally, seeing the entire world shutting down at once was such a blessing. It made me question what I want to go back to and what I want for my life moving forward.  It was almost like a reset button. There was a lot of scariness that came with it. But man, it felt like I got to take a giant deep breath. So that was a cool experience from 2020. While there was a lot of hardship, fear, and anxiety, these three blessings outweighed them.

2020 Pruning Will Bring 2021 Growth

When I describe 2020, as a whole, I would describe it as a year, I will never, ever forget. A year that made me feel excited for my future. I cannot wait to start attacking 2021, which is coming up around the corner. And so you guys, I am excited about what 2021 is going to bring. I know we say that at the beginning of every single year. But this one this year is special. We’re coming off of crazy town.

A lot of us went through pruning in 2020.  As my friend Megan Gilligan loves to say, “Take time to prune your business.” We’re going to find 2021 will bring much growth from this past year’s pruning. You guys, thank you so much for supporting me this year. I hope that you have an incredible New Year celebration. I will see you in 2021!