Consumer holiday spending spans occasions from early November through well after the New Year. You can make selling easier and more profitable by responding to the full breadth of consumer spending during the entire holiday season.

Show Notes:

• The full, detailed chronological timeline of the holiday season
• A consumer's varying spending considerations along the holiday timeline
• Examples of effective inspirational and aspirational fourth quarter marketing and merchandising
• Effective real-time messaging that aligns seller retailing with shopper reality
• Three steps to market and merchandise across the full breadth of consumer spending

For related resources visit merchantmethod.com

Interviewing is a two-way street. Candidates are selling themselves and you, as the hiring manager, are selling the role, your leadership capacity, the company culture, and the value of the brand. Interviewers are being interviewed by candidates. They study your words and your actions. How you make them feel is an important part of the recruiting and hiring process.

In this week's episode I share how to sell the job while you're interviewing potential employees! Have a listen as I speak to the seller inside you.

Summary of Field Notes:

• Offering employee perks as a small business owner
• The parallels between what candidates want from their interview experience and what customers want from their shopping experience
• Simple oversights and misconceptions about interviews being a one-sided process
• Selling the job to another retail seller
• Creating a narrative about what it's like to work for you and your company
• Selling the job during your next round of interviews

For more information on this and related retail insights visit MerchantMethod.com.

My forte is working on experimental retail projects. I love using my skills in innovative ways, stretching and growing along the way. Most of these projects have gone well, but not all of them. Looking back, in the projects that fizzled, I was trying to do too many things that were out of my wheelhouse. By focusing a bit more on my strengths and getting a little complementary help, those ventures could have accelerated faster.

In this week's episode I share how to make your most important hire as the leader of an entrepreneurial venture—yourself! Have a listen as I speak the recruiter and hiring manager inside you.

Summary of Field Notes:

• Organizing personal employment paperwork
• Rejoining the workforce after a year and a half as a stay at home mom
• Self-assessing if you're a good fit for the role you have
• Frequency of performance self-assessments

For more information on this and related retail insights visit MerchantMethod.com.

When I graduated high school I was voted Most Likely to Become a Teacher. Back then it seemed like a bad prediction. I was bound for business school and focused on becoming an entrepreneur and a retailer. It took me years to realize that the most beloved retailers (of all sizes) are just that—teachers.

In this week's episode I share how my skills as a teacher and as a retailer are interdependent. Have a listen as I speak to the teacher inside you.

Summary of Field Notes:

• Early leadership roles that shaped my critical thinking, public speaking, and advocacy skills
• Teaching microentrepreneurship as a college student and returning to classroom teaching 20 years later
• Retailers, Makers, and Merchants impart knowledge and shape behavior, even when they don't realize it
• Valuable teacher tips for your own team, to help you with hiring, training, and retaining top retail talent

For more information on this and related retail insights visit MerchantMethod.com.

Securing my first professional role in corporate retail was no easy task. After one, two, three failed attempts I came to learn that there are multiple ways to get what you want. In this week's episode I share my first job-seeking process and what I learned about going after what you want.

Summary of Field Notes:

• Being dedicated to creating your dream business and dream job
• Remaining focused on achieving what others said you couldn't do
• Finding multiple ways to reach your goal
• Committing to the long game, rather than dwelling on the immediate grind.

For more information on this and related retail trends visit MerchantMethod.com.

This week I'm excited to launch Retail Shift: Field Notes of Retail Success.

This new weekly podcast series complements our retail trend reports with qualitative notes about success in the retail industry. In each installment, I'll share professional lessons I've learned, milestone career moments, meaningful customer connections, and more. I'll also be answering listener questions, so please reach out and join the conversation!

Summary of Field Notes:

• Retail Shift is the companion field guide to our retail trend reports
• Field notes are qualitative notes recorded in the course of practical experience
• Some early influences that shaped my understanding of entrepreneurship
• My early retail experience, from microentreprise to global fashion
• What you can expect from this series and how to submit questions
• The events that inspired me to share more about my professional experiences

For more information on this and related retail trends visit MerchantMethod.com.

Do you think that quarterly realignment of strategic initiatives with long-term goals is just for big businesses? Done well, a structured quarterly business plan can serve as a silent, well-informed, and influential business partner to help keep independent retailers on track and accountable.

In this week's trend report I share three tips to help ensure the successful execution of your thoughtful business planning exercise, as well as three pitfalls to avoid.

Trend report topics:

• Basing business priorities around your business values
• The importance of long-term goals to maintaining big-picture perspective
• Using short-term goals to ensure frequent accomplishments and support momentum
• Prioritizing function over form in a planning system
• Leaving room in the plan to maintain both your momentum and your calendar itself
• Setting yourself up for success with structured goals

For more information on this and related retail trends visit MerchantMethod.com.

Both professionally and personally, I find it valuable to pause and reflect on the recent past, both the things that have happened around me and the things that I have done. As we approach the middle of the year, it's a perfect time to do just that.

In this week's trend report I share my favorite ways to review the business year to date before addressing plans for the second half of the year.

Trend report topics:

• The importance of looking back to inform movement forward
• Reminding yourself of your original goals
• Reviewing your efforts — what worked and what didn't?
• What are your takeaways from the year so far? How will you approach the next 90 days?
• Use this review to assess each area of your business
• Involving a trusted business partner or high-level leader in the process

For more information on this and related retail trends visit MerchantMethod.com.

We talk a lot about small retailers needing to stand out, but our customers are saturated with influencers, expectations are at an all time high, and our competitors are all hustling too. To help deal with all this noise, I'd like to share how surprise & delight can be built into small business practices to help you rise above it all.

I recently facilitated a conversation about this topic during one of our in-person events, and in this week's trend report I share my personal takeaways from that discussion.

Trend report topics:

• How to catch customers off guard in a memorable way through your marketing
• How surprise & delight can turn customers into lifelong fans and brand lovers
• The spectrum of surprise & delight that ranges from wow to wonder
• Inducing a fear of missing out vs. sparking a sense of inclusion
• Using training and resources to elevate and bring consistency to surprise & delight experiences
• Low or no cost surprise & delight retail marketing strategies

For more information on this and related retail trends visit MerchantMethod.com.

Green business practices are more available to independent retailers than ever, providing new opportunities to build value. Decreasing material consumption is good for its own sake and many customers like to see businesses acting responsibly.

On top of that, reducing waste also cuts operating costs, which increases bottom line profit. For small businesses, this method to improve experiences, operations, and finances is too important to ignore.

This week's trend report highlights current practices and tools that you can use to optimize customer experience, grow profits, and strengthen brand equity.

Trend report topics:

• Reusing materials in store planning and for store fixtures
• Types of modern store fixtures worth investing in
• Cloud based applications that can help you streamline your business
• Optimizing your point of sale technology to fully leverage its benefits
• Educating customers about e-receipts and bagless cash wrap transactions
• Reconsidering packaging for online orders

For more information on this and related retail trends visit MerchantMethod.com.