Not another boring EOFY post
No. Not from me.
You already know the required stuff. Run the stock listing, take the backup, ring the accountant. You’ve read that post a hundred times and you’ll read it a hundred more this week. I’m not adding to the pile.
What interests me today is the other list. The one you never write down. The jobs you keep meaning to get to and keep finding a reason not to. New financial year tomorrow, so it’s as good a night as any to stop dodging them.
Start with the dead stock. You know exactly what it is. You walk past it every day and your eye slides straight over it, because you stopped seeing it months ago. It’s been sitting there a year doing nothing. Mark it down hard, bundle it, give it away if that’s what it takes, but get it off the floor and put something that actually sells where it was.
Then have an honest look at your hours. Are you open at times nobody comes in, just because you always have been? In there from eight when the first real customer turns up at half nine? Trading Sundays for a figure that doesn’t cover the cost of being there? You can reorder stock. You can’t reorder the hours of your life, so spend them where they count.
The roster is the same question, and it’s a harder one because it’s about people you like. Are you rostering for the trade or for habit? Two on when one would cope? Be fair and be kind about it, but be straight with yourself about what each shift brings in.
Put your prices up. There, I’ve said it. You’ve been frightened of it for years, sure the customer will walk. Most won’t even notice. The few who do were never the ones keeping the lights on. You were never the cheap option and you were never going to win that fight, so stop pricing like you’re in it.
And bring in something mad, new. Something fresh, something with no business being in a newsagency, something that stops a regular in their tracks to ask what on earth it’s doing there. Back a hunch. Take the punt you’d usually talk yourself out of. Worst case, you mark it down next EOFY with the rest of the dead stock. At least you’ll know.
None of this is on the required list. That’s the whole point. Get one of these done and next year is genuinely better than this one, not just compliant.
So before you flip the calendar, pick one. Just the one. Be ruthless about it. Start the next when that’s sorted.
Happy new financial year.