New Year Goals – Let’s make plans!
When the new year comes around naturally our thoughts turn to the upcoming year and what we hope to achieve in the next 12 months. This can occur both in our personal and professional lives. From a business point of view it is necessary to aid the achievement of these goals by putting in place some benchmarks or attainable smaller tasks, simply called New Year Goals.
However I feel it is important to not put too much pressure on yourself to grow, business can be slow to grow especially in the earlier years of starting. In the same way it is important not to criticize your business too harshly, especially if you are comparing your business to someone else’s who may have been operating for a number of years. You need to focus on your business journey and what you want to achieve rather than comparing your business to a bigger or longer established brand.
Before looking to the future it is good to take this opportunity to review where exactly you are at the moment. A simple review of your business so far can be as basic as a checklist of the following:
- Number of likes or followers on Social Media
- Number of orders over the last 12 months
- Income over the last 12 months
You are best to assess where you are now in terms of you business before identifying where is best to try and aim for next. At this point as well you should take some time to reflect on just how well you have done over the last 12 months. You have achieved so much in just 12 months, even if it is just not giving up. The simplest New Year Goals to set yourself, if you are really struggling, would be to continue as you are doing. It has worked so far, so just keep at it.
When setting goals for the year ahead I try to concentrate on three main goals. This will concentrate you direction for the coming year and will prevent you from trying to undertake too much. To help narrow down my direction I try to categorize my goals into three areas:
- Growth
- Improvement
- New Direction
Growth New Year Goals
I outline a plan to help my business grow on what it had achieved last year. This could be concentrating on growing my social media following; growing the number of products or growing the number of orders.
Improvement New Year Goals
My attention is then turned on to areas of my business that could benefit from improvement. This could be in any area of the business. Some examples may include improving product photography, improving available stock levels or improving the environmental impact of your shipping packaging.
New Direction New Year Goals
It is natural at the turn of the new year to try and see what you could do differently to take your business in a new direction. For some this may mean a complete overhaul of the business however it could be as basic as branching out on a new social media platform or selling your products in a new arena like a new retail outlet.
Just remember to stay realistic, and not put too much pressure on yourself. Having your own business is a lot of work and expecting too much is only going to add unnecessary stress and annoyance. You can’t expect you to be able to do it all, things take time to grow and it is easier to add a small task on gradually that trying to go all out as soon as possible.
Here is my post on setting business goals from last year, that will help you narrow down how to make your goals and give you an idea of what goals I set myself last year. https://www.claireyatfairycrafters.com/setting-business-goals-for-the-coming-year/ On a side note I did manage to achieve the goals that I set myself last year, although I think the goal of upping the amount of ready made stock will continue to be a goal for this coming year as well.
I love this post by Colette Broomhead who really outlines some great goal ideas, these are bound to inspire you into which direction to take https://www.colettebroomhead.com/12-small-business-goals-to-inspire-you/
Let me know what goals you are setting yourself this year, sometimes you are more determined to achieve them when you have vocalized or identified them to someone else. Happy New Year everybody and here’s to a happy, healthy and successful 2020!
