Today is the day when people infamously promise themselves to change things. You might have found yourself mentally agreeing to save more money, lose weight, work less often, attend church or change something.
As a small business leader, your resolutions are called goals. You hopefully have a goal process, create strategies to reach them, measure them and update your business with new ones. If you don’t have a goal process, you need one right now.
Stop everything after you read this blog and ask yourself this critical question: What one thing can I do in the next month while still running my business that will improve profits? Remember that profits are made up of revenue and expenses. So your question is really what one meaningful thing can you do in the next 30 days to bring in more revenue or spend less money?
Make your goal reasonable and measurable. Write it as a promise to yourself: In the next 30 days, I am going to do this thing and it will result in $X of saved expenses or additional revenue. Then create your strategy by continuing in a checklist: To do this thing in 30 days, the following has to happen. Go make it happen.
Just try creating the goal and the measure and schedule time each day to work on your goal and check on its progress. Give yourself something you can accomplish fast that has true profit implications. Hold yourself accountable every workday to that goal. Plan for it in your budget, your processes and throughout your organization. By making this commitment, you avoid procrastination and assign real money to the goal. This is one reason resolutions fail. There is no clear measurement, strategy or integration into your life. The resolutions that succeed? Those people did these things in your personal life.
Go now. Think hard. Create the 30 day profit-driven goal. Then in February, create another short-term goal and a medium term goal. Repeat this strategic exercise until you are constantly working on immediate, short-term and long-term goals related to your organization’s profitability. Delegate, bring in contractors if you can, test, strategize, think–make something happen. Then come back here on February 1 and tell us how much profit you generated.
Image: manos by xololounge via morguefile