Making resolutions when New Year’s comes around is a fairly common practice — but when’s the last time you made any resolutions for your business? Sure, you probably set goals fairly regularly, but it’s worth taking this time to reflect on what your business could do just a little bit better. You may not need to get your business exercising on a Stairmaster, but there are always a few leaves that can be turned over at the beginning of a new year to boost your business success.
- Keep your bookkeeping up to date: No business owner likes to admit that you haven’t taken care of all those receipts sitting in a shoebox somewhere, but it’s not an uncommon problem. If keeping your books is something that is an issue, now is the perfect time to explore ways to improve the situation.
- Lose some dead weight: If you’ve noticed a lag somewhere in the way your business operates, it’s often easier to just say that you’ll deal with it later. Well, with the New Year almost here, maybe it’s time to make the decision to fix whatever is slowing you down.
- Learn something new: One of the best ways to keep your business competitive is to keep looking for new methods and tools. Make time in your schedule for you or your team to learn more about what’s out there and how to implement new techniques into your business.
- Find a mentor: If moving forward with your business has been tough lately, one way to start figuring out what else could help you is to talk to a mentor — someone who has already been through this stage in a business’ development — so you can get some tips and speed up the process.
- Expand your network: Considering how heavily most businesses depend on networks to find both new customers and new vendors, it may be worth revisiting your network and building upon it. Going to new networking events isn’t enough, though. Strengthening your existing networking and getting outside of the groups of people you regularly network with are equally important.
Of course, these are just examples of resolutions you can set for your business. With 2010 ending and 2011 beginning, you have the opportunity to look at your business and see where you can really improve things. Even better, the end of the year is a perfect time for transitions because there are a few that you’ll probably have to make anyway.
No matter what resolutions you choose, make them reachable and measurable — if you can see how you’re going to reach them, resolutions are easier to work on, just like any other goal. Something as simple as writing your business’ resolutions down can make them much easier to reach. After all, what’s the point of making a resolution if you aren’t going to work on it?
Image by Flickr user Sally Mahoney (Creative Commons)
Google+Web.com is now offering forums designed to support small businesses in cities throughout the US. Learn more about these forums here: http://Businessforum.web.com/
Tags: business success, small business
Posted in Small Business | 1 Comment »
