2021, We’re ready for you. As 2020 comes to a close, I think we can safely say… it’s been quite the year for all of us. The world looks and feels very different than it did beginning the New Year in 2020. This has been a year of full of change, unexpected challenges and many, many ups and downs. We’ve all had to learn new routines. Despite the distance between all of us, we’ve created new ways to embrace family and friends—safely and virtually. We’ve shuttered offices but fashioned home studios and workspaces, sometimes out of spaces we didn’t give a second thought to before. We’ve created new reasons to celebrate and made bigger deals of the old reasons (birthdays, graduations, Tuesdays). There have been highs and lows for all of us, that’s for certain.

But as usual, this time of year affords us the opportunity to take a step back and take a bigger look at how we’re doing. What we’ve accomplished, and what we haven’t. And while it feels like there’s an endless list of negative consequences to the last nine months, it has given us the opportunity to take on challenges we never would have seen coming. I think this has been our scrappiest year yet. Now, you might not think that would be a marker of success five years into a business. But, We’ve never been prouder of our ability to stay nimble, think on our feet, do a lot with a little, and somehow make it all look like there was a master plan in place.

So as we look to brighter days—because that’s what we do this time of year—we do it as a stronger, smarter, people. Stronger, smarter small businesses. And a stronger, smarter community. Thank you to all of our Neely & Chloe family who supported us through a year that at times felt impossible. We couldn’t have done it without you!