Forget about swearing you’ll go to the gym 3x a week in 2016. Ditch your plans to break up with caffeine. When it comes to New Year’s resolutions this year, focus your time and energy on your business instead.
Creating realistic resolutions is a healthy way for you to reach new heights in the coming year — without stressing out over impossible feats.
Need ideas on what's ‘realistic’ in relation to New Year's resolutions for your small biz? Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking.
Optimize A Time-Consuming Process
Is there a task within your business that (needlessly) sucks up hours of time every week? Maybe it’s creating spreadsheets for your financials. Or following up via email with customers who’ve made a purchase. Or packaging your orders.
In 2016, set a realistic goal to streamline a single process that nibbles away at your time and sanity. Look for a tool or software that can make things simpler or an online solution that frees up your time to focus on other, more pressing issues.
For example: Say you spent hours every week sending thank you emails to customers who buy from your eCommerce store. Using an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor, you can create and send automated email messages that are sent as soon as a customer completes a trigger action, like completing your checkout page.
Create a New Budget
If you’re trying to reach a new income goal in 2016, you’re going to need to focus on a budget that helps you accomplish just that. For small businesses, year-end is a great time to look at your financials to figure out where you can cut back money-wasting activities or beef up highly profitable avenues.
If you need a little guidance, look for a resource like Blonde on a Budget that can help you budget mindfully without over-doing it.
Evaluate your Online Assets
If you haven’t updated your website in a while, your social media accounts feel stale, or you’ve been using the same ol’ email template for years — set a New Year’s goal to give your online business assets a makeover.
It’s important to be sure everything is mobile-friendly, but also take some time to make things look and sound fresh. Will this require somewhat of an investment? Possibly, depending on your in-house resources — but you’ll reap the benefits of these positive changes.
Hire a New Team Member
Have you been dying to bring on a customer service representative or additional sales manager, but never felt like it was the right time?
Stop giving yourself reasons to avoid the change — outline the pros and cons of hiring someone new, review the financial feasibility, and then take action.
Small business owners are always tempted to do it all. But bringing in qualified, talented support means freeing yourself up to get out of the details and into big-picture thinking. Allow yourself to be a leader again instead of wearing all of the hats in your business.
Launch Something New
There’s nothing wrong with maintaining the status quo, but 2016 can be the year you release something exciting and new, if you make it a priority.
Whether it’s writing a book, launching a new product line, or creating a new lead-generator (think free template, eBook, etc.), now is the time to think about what you’ll do that’s both exciting and new for your company in 2016.
Make plans, hire professional freelance support (if you need it), and bring this sparkling new concept to life.
Be Realistic, Plan Now
Intentions aimed at New Year’s resolutions for your small biz come from a great place — but they only mean so much. Your resolutions in 2016 should really be commitments to realistic goals…not half-hearted “might-do’s.”
What are your small business resolutions for 2016?
