The new year symbolizes a clean slate. People often take the opportunity to create elaborate, and usually difficult-to-stick-with, New Year’s resolutions. We listed simple resolutions for business owners to help them have a successful year ahead.
1. Give Your Business A Financial Health Check
Look at the money coming in and out of your business and consider whether you have sufficient headroom. If not, what can you do to address the issue? For example, do you need to spend more time chasing late payments, or could new financing facilities provide an answer?
2. Prioritize Productivity
Unproductive businesses rapidly fall behind their competitors, so think hard about how you can improve. That might mean reconsidering out-of-date processes, for example. Or investing in new technologies to automate mundane manual tasks that take up too much of your employees’ time.
3. Find Out How To Make Your Customers Even Happier
This year, talk to your customers about how you can serve them better and what else they might want from you. That doesn’t mean giving up on new customers altogether – but put your current customers first.
4. Be (Digitally) Present
Over the past two decades. I’ve witnessed the financial industry shift from in-person education and networking events to webinars and LinkedIn connections. If you’re a business owner without social media sites, or worse, without a website, this is your year to be digitally present.
Whether you’re selling a product or service, you can be sure that your customers are going to research you before they make a purchase. What they see online has become your first impression. So it’s important that you make it a good one. If you’re not very tech-savvy, consider outsourcing to a digital marketing company or freelancer or even hiring a new employee. Being digitally present doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. But it has become a true necessity in the world of business
5. Fund Your Future
The new year is the perfect time to look toward the future. Consider adding to or setting up a retirement savings plan. As a business owner, the benefits of creating a retirement plan include significant tax advantages. Attracting and retaining better employees, and contributing to the plan to save for your own retirement.
Although setting up and administering a retirement plan can be a difficult and time-consuming task, you have the option of working with a financial advisor. Who can demonstrate the various options and find the right plan for you, your business, and your employees. Business owners are constantly being pulled in different directions, and trying to prioritize can be difficult. Setting small, short-term goals for the new year is an excellent way to create momentum, and it can help set the tone for the next 12 months.
