Recycling your resolutions
Toning up your inner entrepreneur for the coming year
By Diane Davis
The first month of the New Year sets the tone in a number of industries. Investors anxiously watch "the January effect," and believe that as the market goes in January, so goes the year. The diet industry does its best to capture all of us when we have just made the commitment to lose weight after those abundant holiday meals.
Now is the time when any of us do a mental inventory of how well our enterprise did last year, what we want to change or fine tune, and what went well that we want to build upon and carry forward.
Some of the key indicators of how well the last year went should be benchmarks for the New Year and will help in planning how to make the next 12 months better. These include: Net profit, employee productivity, cash flow, market share, achieving sales targets and progress toward strategic goals.
Your accountant and marketing consultant can help you to analyze these. But there is still the inner review of how you as an entrepreneur are reorienting your mindset for the next 12 months. Here are a few resolutions that will help you do just that, albeit, a little tongue in cheek.
• I will use my office as a center, not a silo: I will make it into a center for building strong business and community relationships. I will go to those early morning, late afternoon networking events often, because the best new lead generator is word of mouth.
• I will stick to my business plan: Flexible, yes; flummoxed, no. I will not be distracted from my goals.
• I will delegate, not abnegate: I will keep control of office operations, including bookkeeping, as a priority.
• It’s all about the customer: A business without pleased customers or clients probably won’t be around for the next New Year.
• I will always be quality conscious: If it doesn’t look like it came from here, it shouldn’t come from here.
• I will praise good workers and good works: Management consulting gurus say praise is more important than pay. Well maybe...but it certainly is appreciated.
• I will continuously improve what I offer: Standing still means being left behind.
• I will allow my inner techie out: Staying up with the leading edge of technology means making it a priority, even if I can’t get my thumbs to text message yet.
• I will make more progress in becoming green: Small businesses CAN make a difference and I will continue to try, because green isn’t just for cash – it’s for caring about our earth.
• I will seek more ways to give back: I will listen for the pain and need in our community and do what I can, because sharing is an important part of being in business in the first place.
Happy New Year and may you find yourself way ahead of this year, next year!
Diane Davis is a public relations consultant with the Round Pond Group LLC, based in Central Mass.
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