The CEO's Journal- Entry 12: Something New

Hi Guys!

I’m trying something new with the CEO’s Journal. I found it tough at times to write an article summarizing everything that occurred over the course of a week or month. Instead, I’m going to test a new system where I document every day! Each day I’ll outline how my day went and the challenges. Then, twice per week I’ll post them all together for you guys. So with that said, let’s start with today:

Sunday March 10, 2019

This weekend was a weird one for me. Usually I’m completely tied up with directing our pop up shops. But this weekend, our pop up shop was cancelled due to an issue with the facility. I then had the choice of how I decided to view this situation.

I could have seen it as a huge catastrophe that things had not gone according to plan. And to be honest, Austin of a year ago might have seen it as such. But thanks to my now extensive (lol) 1.5 years as a CEO, I now know that you can’t get frustrated at everything that doesn’t go the way you planned. In fact, I have learned that I should actually expect things to not run perfectly because very rarely do they ever. That’s not to say that things don’t usually go well or that planning is pointless. But just as it's important to plan, it’s also important to be flexible and adjust to the circumstances that are set in front of me. I have found that it’s best to look for the opportunities in every situation rather than complain about things not going according to my master plan. So in this situation, rather than sulk about the pop up shop being cancelled, I immediately thought of the benefit: TIME!

As the CEO of a young and rapidly growing company, time is a rare commodity. Between handling the website, social media, pop up shops, meetings, inventory, seeking new opportunities; the list of responsibilities is endless. But because the pop up shop this weekend was cancelled, I now had extra time that I didn't think I'd have. Although I would certainly have preferred to be at the pop up shop making sales and connecting with customers, I was still happy that I now had the opportunity to get a lot of other important things done. So what did I do with that time? I spent a lot of it just thinking about the future of the company and working on the vision for what I wanted Elevate to become. It was time well spent.

Lesson: Seek the opportunity in every situation.

Monday March 11, 2019

I’m not a fan of new years resolutions. Why you may ask? Most new years resolutions fail within the first month because they end up being wishes rather than plans. Also, I don’t really see the point in waiting until January 1st every year to make a positive change in your life.

But while I’m no fan of new years resolutions, I am a fan of setting yearly, quarterly (3 months) and monthly goals for myself. Breaking down the yearly goal into quarterly, and monthly steps helps create a plan for how the yearly goal will be accomplished. With this in mind, one of my goals for 2019 was to become an avid reader. So on January 1st I made it my goal to read 12 books in 2019. This breaks down to 3 books per quarter and 1 book per month.

I am proud to say that not only am I staying on track with my reading goals, I am also shattering them. Today I finished my 6th book of 2019. I have already achieved half of my year’s goal before the first quarter has even ended. I am PROUD!

How was I able to do this? I organized my days around the things I deemed most important. For me, reading is a way of obtaining knowledge, learning and growing as a person. By investing time and money into bettering myself, I am simultaneously improving my ability to run Elevate. To me this is IMPORTANT. So every single day, the first thing I do when I wake up is pick up a book and READ. It’s that simple. Do you have a fitness related goal? An academic goal? Regardless of what it is, if it's important to you and you are having trouble sticking to it, I challenge you to get it done FIRST before the challenges of the day knock you off course. It certainly wasn't easy to force myself to reorganize my days around my priorities. But now, I wake up EXCITED to read and learn something new. And at the end of every day, I get to go to sleep knowing that I am a better and smarter version of myself than I was the night before. So I guess I have two lessons for you today. The first is PRIORITIZE and organize your day around the things you deem most important. Do the most important things first.

The second lesson is LEARN each and every day. Make sure that every night you get to go to sleep a better version of yourself. As long as you do that, every day is a good day.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

I’m busy most of the time. I’m always doing something Elevate related and as the company grows, the work load grow equally. I’m at the point now where I need help with that load and an area where this has really become apparent to me is in the @Elevate_Canada Instagram stories.

I remember at this time last year, our stories were AMAZING (maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit). But seriously, our stories used to be full of fun, exciting, funny, and creative content. It pains me to say that this hasn’t been the case lately. And that’s on me. I’ve gotten lazy with it. I am no longer putting the time and effort that I once did into making the stories as entertaining as they used to be. For that I am sorry. BUT the good news is that today, I asked for someone to help me. His name is Jake Upshall. You guys will like him. Jake is a talented writer, a meme addict and an all around fun guy. He’ll be handling most of the Instagram stories starting next week and I’m really looking forward to what he comes up with (No pressure Jake).

Lesson of the day: Don’t be too proud or stubborn to ask for help when you need it!

Wednesday, March 13th

More inventory has FINALLY arrived! I'd been waiting on this shipment since January and I was super excited when I saw those 8 hefty boxes arrive. I was really getting tired of telling customers “I’m sorry but that crewneck is sold out.”

The boxes arrived at around 5:00 and believe it or not it wasn’t until 10:15 that I was finally finished organizing everything. It isn’t a quick process by any means as I have to organize the items by type, colour and size, count them, make sure everything matches up with my records, package the items that have already been ordered, adjust the website, and then box everything up again.

It sounds really boring I know. But oddly enough, I don’t find it that bad. I think It’s because I enjoy every step of this quest to building Canada’s #1 clothing brand. I love seeing progress and making it happen, regardless of what the task at hand is. Outside of my inventory adventure, I had a really great meeting with Samantha (our first employee) this morning. I can’t disclose what we spoke about but trust me, you’ll find out soon. We’re working on a BIG project. OH! And I received a couple of samples of some new products! I was so exhausted from organizing the inventory that I didn’t get a chance to check them out but believe me, it’s one of the first things on my to-do list tomorrow. These samples are of items that a lot of people have been asking me for. I’m really excited to see how they turned out. I’ll be posting my analysis of them on my personal Instagram account! Have a look at my page to check out the samples with me: @DedicatedAustin.

Thanks a lot for reading guys and thank you for following me and my journey! Peace!

Austin Chambers, Elevate Founder & CEO