THIS IS OUR big March VEE issue and fingers-crossed some of you are actually reading it at the Javits Center and enjoying our Buying Guide on page 32. Putting it together, I couldn’t help but be reminded of this issue two years ago. We happily sent our big Vision Expo East issue to the printer and then bam! COVID canceled everything. By the time the issue hit most hands, the show had been canceled for weeks and there we were hyping it up on the cover, egg all over our face.
That one would have been hard to avoid but it still hurt. And though I hope most go unnoticed, there are little screwups in almost every issue of INVISION. Some are unavoidable — like when we’re given the wrong price by a company and after they see it in print they want to change it. Some are our mistakes — like last month’s issue where we swapped the cover image at the 11th hour and missed updating the credit in the Table of Contents. (That correction is on the INBOX page.) But each one is like a little paper cut … and when I get an email that someone noticed … salt in the wound.
Producing a magazine means a lot of hurry up and wait but that last week before the printer deadline it’s a race to the finish line. We’re tired, we’re bleary-eyed and we’ve got too many balls in the air … we’re bound to drop one. But that’s just like life. Sometimes it moves fast. Sometimes it moves slow. Sometimes it feels like it’s doing both at the same time.
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Like many of you, I have a great team. We’ve been working together long enough now that our strengths have been identified and we know where to bolster each other up. But part of that was me figuring out how to delegate things that weren’t the best use of my time or skills. And trust me it was tough. If you struggle to delegate too, we’ve got just the story for you on page 40.
A few things I had to learn are that there will be a learning curve, they are going to do it differently than you would, and there are likely to be some mistakes, but that’s OK. If you never screw up, how do you ever learn?
Best wishes for your business,
Five Smart Tips From This Issue
- Yes, hashtags are still very much a thing, but are you using them correctly? (Monthly Project, page 20)
- Client relationships are important. Communication is important. Collecting and using data is important. You need the right program to manage it all. (Better Vision, page 28)
- Performance Review … a daunting name for a necessary and productive process. Read how your peers do them and maybe pick up some pointers. (Do You or Don’t You, page 70)
- Sometimes you need to delegate; sometimes you need to not manage at all. Just. Walk. Away. (Tip Sheet, page 52)
- What’s your new hire onboarding and training look like? If it’s remotely “sink or swim” adjacent, we’ve got a better way. (Columns, page 62)
