Why make New Year’s resolutions? If you’re like most people, you don’t want to waste time committing to something you’ll never do. But, I bet you really want to improve something in your business or personal life. Maybe you want to get more organized, spend more time with your loved ones, get started living more healthy, take more time off from work, delegate more tasks to your employees, find someone to help you at the office, get rid of a bad customer or troublesome employee, seek new business opportunities, or start looking for ways to build some wealth. Whatever you want, you’ll never get it without taking the first step. A few simple New Year’s resolutions will help you and your business become better.
Could you imagine a professional football coach starting the season without a written plan and specific goals to win more games than they did last year? Of course not! A great coach always takes a look at their strengths and weaknesses after the season ends to determine what it will take to do better next year. As a business owner, manager, employee, spouse, parent or friend, this process of assessment and improvement is a necessary factor in achieving the goals you want. A year-end review and goal setting session will get you started off towards new targets with a renewed spirit of excitement.
People who write down their goals achieve them. Those who don’t write down what they want, never make their dreams a priority and go through life searching for success. Every time I have a target or goal written down, I stay focused on doing what it takes to make it become a reality. Start by addressing these ideas for improvement:
1. Spend more time with family and friends!
I know it’s easier to continue to do what you’ve always done and hope things get better. Continue to try to do everything yourself at work, operate without a strong management team, make every decision and stay at work late and you will continue to miss your son’s football games. This style also guarantees you don’t have time to buy your spouse flowers on your anniversary. What’s your excuse? Too busy, work is slow, or you can’t afford time to get organized. Promising to spend more time with your family and friends is a popular resolution. But most never achieve it. Why? They don’t make their dreams specific and write them down.
2. Start a fitness and health program!
I belong to a country club that has a great health club and workout facility. When I go there early, I always see several successful business owners working out every morning. How do they make time to exercise? They have determined fitness benefits their performance at work and home. After their workouts, they get to the office around 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. You could never do that, right? Why? The health of your company is dependent on you getting to work first and leaving last. I guarantee your company could live without you for an hour or two every morning if you want to make it happen.
3. Improve your company’s fitness!
Are you taking a hard look at what needs to improve, where you need to trim the fat or what areas need to get fit? Look at your business fitness goals for the next 12 months. Consider these following areas you may want to improve: customers, projects, personnel, management, training, quality, service, sales, marketing, estimating, technology, subcontractors, suppliers, profits, productivity, financial systems, operations, field systems, project management, equipment or your paycheck.
4. Re-Structure your company management team!
In your business, where should you add better people to lighten your load and allow for growth? Perhaps you need to add a professional office manager, accounting controller, project manager, estimator or field superintendent. When you add a real pro who can help take some of your workload, you’ll be able to focus on the priorities that will increase your sales and improve your bottom line.
5. Balance your budget!
Living way beyond your means is the new normal in business and personal life. For example, in business, buying too much equipment, forces you to hire mechanics, buy service vehicles and rent a bigger yard. This way you’ll have to work hard just to make the payments and cover your overhead. When you’re strapped, you make desperate decisions and poor choices just to keep afloat. A resolution to get a handle on your personal and business finances is important.
6. Get focused on your top three priorities!
In business, only a few things are worth stressing over. What are your top three priorities in your company? I suggest the only things business owners need to stress about are sales, revenue and customers. When you have enough sales and customers, the rest will sort itself out with good systems and people. How many more hours will you dedicate to your top three priorities over the next year?
7.Write it now!
Now for the fun part.Write down your New Year’s resolutions for the next year. First, write down the one HUGE thing you want to accomplish plus three goals you want to achieve. Be sure to be specific and make your targets measurable. Keep your goals in front of you to refer to often. When you see targets in writing, you stay focused and constantly think of action plans and steps to achieve what you want. By using the year end as a trigger to sit down and write out your goals and identify New Year’s resolutions, your future will become what you want it to be. Don’t wait another year to identify what you want. The clock is ticking!
George Hedley owns Hedley Construction
& Development Inc. and Hardhat Presentations in Newport Beach, Calif. He is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, popular speaker and business coach. Visit www.hardhatpresentations.com for more information
