Another November is drawing to a close; and once again my thoughts returned to being thankful for my many blessings. Overall, I consider myself to be a grateful person, but November usually brings thankful thoughts more front and center to mind.

For the last decade or so, I’ve been participating in #30DaysofThanks challenge. I believe it is mostly on social media, hence the hashtag ?, but my reflections were mostly private during my devotion time. I really like the 30-day format because it helps me to really concentrate on the everyday blessings that could otherwise be taken for granted.

Being a small business owner means you wear many different “hats”. On any given day, I am the ‘department manager” for Customer Service, Sales, Accounting, PR, SMM or Marketing (maybe Tracy Helps You should get an assistant ?). I am always trying to learn better ways to grow my business & improve my business skills.

2013 was the year I made the dream of Tracy Helps You a reality. After months of research and self-education (hello … former homeschool Mom) I realized that if I waited for everything to be perfect, it would never happen. So, I decided that being a small business owner was always going to be an adventure in continuing education.

I’ve taken advantage of the 30-day format to help strengthen some needed skills as an entrepreneur. I knew that having a blog was a great way to improve my website’s SEO It was also an effective way to let people know about the many ways that Tracy Helps You can “help” them. As you probably know, I have a very conversational style of writing, and hope it’s comes across as a way for people to get to “know” me virtually. In November of 2014, I committed to writing a short blog post each day spelling out the things I was thankful for. I feel like the benefits of this was two-fold, counting my blessings while honing my blog writing skills.

This year, I again used the #30DaysofThanks challenge to improve my business skills. This year I am doing a Facebook Live video on the Tracy Helps You business page telling people what I am thankful for that day. Again, it’s a way to count my blessings, as well as, improve my social media skills by being more comfortable & confident in front of the camera.

I looked back and re-read some of my “thankful” blog posts from 2013, you can read them here. Some of the daily blessings were repeated (and I believe worth repeating), but many are completely new this year. You can watch them here (don’t forget to follow me on FB, Insta, Pinterest, Twitter & Linkedin) #SorryNotSorry for the shameless plug … my SMM department manager persona had to come out ?

I believe I’ve improved (not perfected) my skills in both areas. What do you think? What topics would you like me to talk about going forward? I am always open to suggestions ?