Well…that sounds lame. Around the turn of the year, it seems like one of the things you can count on is individuals saying “New Year, New Me”. The beginning of the year seems as an opportunity for them to declare that they are going to be different…or new. This might even be true for a period of time. For instance, so far this year I have exercised every day. Probably not something that will be true come May…or maybe even next week. I am human. I have come to accept that.
But, who wants that kind of negativity in their life?! Not me for sure.
MY TAKE ON NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS
Nobody makes New Years Resolutions with the intentions of breaking them…or at least I hope not. This year I sat down and made some New Years Resolution for me and my business. Not once did I include making a NEW ME…rather, I focused on trying to figure out how I could become better. People want to become NEW, but doing that would erase your past. Erasing your past is more complicated than one might think. Erasing your past means you lose a ton of experience in this thing called life. Your New Years Resolution should not try to erase your past, you can’t do it, rather it should be building on what you have learned, something that you can do.
Now, you probably have already made your New Years Resolutions. Hopefully they are fluid enough that you can change them somewhat if something that I have written so far has inspired you to think a little differently. I have a sad statistic though, around only 8% of New Years Resolutions are found to be successful. You don’t have to be a math major to realize, statistically speaking, you have a very low chance of making your New Years Resolution. So, what can you do that will help?
MAKE YOUR RESOLUTIONS ATTAINABLE
In my business, throughout 2017, I tried several different things. Some things worked and some things didn’t as should be expected. Some of the things that did not work was a result of me not having a reasonable expectation. One example is that I have been wanting to make a splash in video. It has become very popular across all channels and is a medium that every business should be utilizing. I have thought about posting daily, doing these long, in-depth tips/training videos among other things. Well, I am a small business. When I spend my time doing that stuff, my client experience sometimes suffer. Posting daily truly is not an attainable goal for me. Does that mean I should just not jump into that content medium at this point in my business? No, rather, I am going to try something that a lot of people are doing…a Two Minute Tuesday video that will be a quick tip or something along those lines (I can’t ruin the surprise). This is an attainable goal. It is something that I can even make several at one time to get ahead. With that being said, you have to be visionary. Set goals that will stretch you. For some people, posting everyday is something that they could incorporate into their life…though it would stretch them. You will be surprised to see what you can do. But don’t just imagine it, create a plan and make it happen.
CREATE A PLAN
Without a plan you are doomed to fail. For real. But, for all those that love plans and love sticking to them…being flexible is a necessity. Speaking of goals, I get to work a cliche into the blog…Failing to plan is planning to fail. So, how do you create a successful plan? Create a system that allows you to establish a laid out plan for what you are working on. Sticking to the Two Minute Tuesday example, there are several different ways to go about about planning for it. Maybe each month I want to do a theme. For example, January would be Branding, February would be Social Media Marketing, etc. In my planning stage I should brainstorm the different themes I would want to cover this year. Once I have brainstormed the themes I can then work on getting those themes tied down to months. I don’t have to think up the entire 12 months of content at the beginning of the year. Rather, I have gotten myself headed in the general direction for this new goal that I have. Included in my plan I need to create time to plan for each quarter of content where I would tie down my content for each Two Minute Tuesday that I would be doing. Without building this time in, I am preparing myself for failure at a later point in the year. But, by creating this time I am taking away one of the hardest parts of the Two Minute Tuesday, developing content.
TRACK YOUR SUCCESS
One of the things that I hate to see is when businesses have end of the year planning sessions but no follow-up session. Whether you believe in making a New Years Resolution or not, you should make goals for yourself and your business. Without following up on these goals how will you ever know if you achieved or how close you are to achieving the goal? I have the answer for you, you won’t. Create a system of some type that will integrate with the system you have when you are in your planning stage to track the success of your goals. Take time to rejoice when you do meet your goals. Be your hardest critic thought, make sure you achieve your goals. Just like you do in the planning stage, set aside time throughout the year to see where you are at on your goals and to make sure that you actually do achieve your goals. As a side note, sometimes having a project management system that your entire team can be apart of helps in the planning stage and tracking stage. I have a few that I like and will share with you at a later time.
In Conclusion, whether you are setting your New Years Resolution or just setting goals for your business in general it is extremely important to follow a roadmap of some type when you are creating them. This roadmap is one that I follow and have had success with. There are many other things that could be included to help increase your success of completing your goals. Having an accountability partner would be a bonus tip that I would include. The important thing is that you create a plan, some days you will not feel like completing your goals, but having the plan will help ease that feeling and, hopefully, help you overcome. And then you have to track yourself to make sure that you do succeed.
We wish you good luck in 2018. We hope that your business is able to grow and that in some way or another, we are able to be apart of your success.
