Mix your favorite drink or prepare your favorite meal and just before you are able to enjoy it, stop.  Or miss one of the critical ingredients in that favorite food.  Better yet, invite someone over for a lavish meal and forget to make anything. When you miss part of the process, the results are not what you want, period.

Think about this equation for a little while:

Success = Thought x Action + Time

Thought: Positive attitude governs everything you do; perpetuated through focus, philosophy and goals
Action: The state or process of acting or doing; reinforcement of what you know and learn
Time: Consistent and compounding, time is either your friend or your enemy

Retail can no longer be dependent on customers walking in for the sake of it. It does still happen, but it is not the driver of business (and in reality has not been for years).  Everything you do either brings you closer to a goal, dream or need or it drives you further away.  When you have a process that works, refinement is critical.  However, acting separate, or dramatically changing what you do will most likely have dire consequences.  Constantly reinforce your positive results with repetition.  In the event that you don't understand how a specific deal went so well, don't blow it off or explain it away to luck.  Repeat it until it becomes habit.

"Experience is something you get right after you need it"
– Benjamin Franklin

We all realize the constraints that exist in today's market ranging from credit to inventory to budgets to marketing to the media and ultimately your customers.  Don't make excuses for them or yourself!  You have to choose whether you're on the cause or the effect side.

"You can make excuses or you can make money, but you can't make them both at the same time" – Anonymous

Learn great things, plan great things, expect great things…and then repeat great things.  Process is one of the best tools you have outside of your own memory.  Take something that works and make it your own.  Two things are critical to success in process: one is to remember and the second is to better.

If you want something you've never had, do something you've never done. Go out there any be great.

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results