New year, new you? How about a new year for your business? Plenty of people make personal new year’s resolutions at the start of a new year but sometimes forget about setting resolutions for their businesses.
After a particularly challenging year, you may have different new year’s resolutions for your businesses from usual. Forbes published a great piece on resolutions following a very tough year that has some great suggestions if you haven’t already made your list – it’s not too late to do so!
To make resolutions, start by evaluating what success means to you. What do you want to have more of in 2021 and what do you want to have less of?
Making your resolutions is only the first part of the puzzle. The second – and most important part is sticking to them.
Our professional business advisers are here to recommend 7 ways to stick to new year’s resolutions for business owners that should keep you on track for 2021.
Take a look at business adviser Helen’s social media post about sticking to your goals for more inspiration and motivation:
1 – Set SMART goals
The first step to sticking to your business resolutions is to ensure that they’re achievable in the first place.
To do this, ensure that you’ve created SMART goals for yourself. These are:
S-pecific
M-easureable
A-chievable
R-realistic
T-ime bound
Without these measures in place, you’ll find it hard to track your progress and analyse whether you’ve met your goals as the year ticks on.
Additionally, put milestones in place to help you reach your goals. This will help you stay motivated with your resolutions and therefore more likely to stick to them.
2 – Reality check
The first part of the reality check is to ensure that you have all the resources you could possibly need to achieve your goals.
Think about what obstacles you will need to overcome and try to establish how you’ll handle those in advance.
The second part of your reality check is to not go crazy and try to achieve everything at once.
As the new year has just begun, you’re keen and ready to make change with your list of resolutions. However, if you try to work on them all at once, you’ll end up struggling and possibly achieving none.
Try breaking down your resolutions in order of priority or by how long they’ll take to achieve. Work on the most important ones or the ones that will take the longest at the beginning of the year, and make a plan for how you’ll tackle each one over the next 12 months.
3 – Make them stick, part 1: Write your resolutions down
If you just think about what your resolutions are, not only are you less likely to stick with them, you’re also more likely to forget what they are.
Write them down in a way that suits you, whether that’s a pretty and colourful A3 piece of paper stuck to your wall, or a plain and simple spreadsheet.
It doesn’t matter where you write it down, but wherever it is, don’t lose it!
4 – Make them stick, part 2: Share your resolutions with others
As well as writing your resolutions down, another technique to help stick to your resolutions is to share your resolutions with others.
According to 15fiveblog “when you have the added weight of external expectations, you’re more likely to succeed”.
As a business owner, it’s especially important to share your business resolutions with your employees. When working towards goals together, you should all be singing from the same hymn sheet, and this will be impossible to do if your staff don’t know what new steps you’re planning on taking.
These ideas help to make your resolutions stick because you’re held accountable for what you said you’re going to do.
5 – Health check: Practice using positive affirmations
Affirmations are positive statements that can help you to challenge and overcome difficulties. Examples may include “I will be successful”, “I will stick to my resolutions”, and “I will have more fun at work”.
By repeating these affirmations about your resolutions, either aloud or by writing them down, you are helping motivate and inspire yourself. When you repeat these affirmations often enough, your brain starts believing them truly, making them seem more attainable.
6 – Keep asking why
As the year ticks on, your resolutions may begin to fall to the wayside (don’t worry, it happens to all of us!), try to remember why you made these resolutions in the first place.
Remind yourself of your why! Ask yourself what positive changes you wanted to see within yourself or for your business. Ask why you wanted to make these changes and what it is you want to achieve through these resolutions.
Is it to have more free time and fun? Is it to turn over higher profits or manage the mental health of you and your team better?
Remind yourself of why you started your business to relight the fire within yourself and to keep going.
7 – Ask for help
Asking for help is never a sign of weakness, and instead it demonstrates your ability to recognise areas in which you struggle.
You may need physical help in delivering some of your resolutions such as practising better wellbeing at work.
Alternatively, you may need help with a resolution that’s in an area you’ve never previously explored. For example, if you struggle with cash flow management and one of your business resolutions is to be more on top of your cash, you may not know where to start.
Asking for help from qualified business advisers can help you with specific tasks such as cash flow management.
Contact us
Our professional and experienced business advisers can provide all sorts of help when it comes to sticking to business new year’s resolutions.
Our advisers will help by holding you accountable to the resolutions and milestones that you’ve set, along with helping you break down your resolutions into smaller achievable chunks, plus offering advice on areas in which you have little knowledge or experience.
Whether your resolutions are financial, health and wellbeing, or management orientated, our business advisers can help you with your business goals for 2021.
Contact us today to get started.
