You need to stop making new year resolution goals
Only on the first of January and make goals lists every month!
Is that period of the year when everyone talks about New Year's Eve and the wonderful things they are going to do in 2019! I have a harsh reality for you. If you don’t revisit your goals each week and each month you are going to find yourself in the same position in Decembre 2019.
When you sit down and write your goals choose the most important 5–10 of them. If you have a list of more then 10 goals you are going to become overwhelmed and become tired before you even begin. Take each goal and divide it into 12 parts. Now for each part create a little subdivision that you have to achieve each week. Now your goal is not only a dream, but it also becomes a plan.
Goals sometimes get written in a diary and stay there for a year until is time to make a new one. Plans are being done!
Now that we discussed what you plan to do is time to focus on the things you are going to delegate. You are an entrepreneur, a small business owner and you have each year to find new creatives ways to empower people to do more, to get new people to do some of the things you do so you can take care more of the business you want to have, not just the business you are having right now.
Each entrepreneur always has to manage two businesses! The one he has right now and the business he wants to create in the future!
Make a list with 3–4 things that you are doing right now that you could delegate to someone else. Don’t start complaining that you don’t have the money, you don’t have enough employees or say that only you can do things right. Ask yourself instead “If I could delegate only this thing that I dread doing each day and robs me of energy, how would my business grow?” When you get the answer to that question you will start looking for creative ways to find the people or the money or the willingness to allow people to make mistakes or make things their way.
In the end, we have to talk about the things you have to stop doing. If you watch TV news, spend 1 hour each morning on Facebook or play some addictive game that doesn’t allow you to do your work, you have to STOP! I admit that sometimes I find myself guilty of this as well. From time to time I like to play some strategy game on my phone and time flies away. This is going to be on my list for 2019. Right now I reduced the time I spent playing to 10–15 minutes as a relaxing activity after work. I do it consciously and if the game is not over and the time is up I close it and focus on other things.
A friend of my had his assistant change his Facebook password each week so that he can only get the password in the weekend when he allowed him to look on social media. His assistant always finds creative ways to create passwords that make you feel guilty. One of the passwords he used was “LessTimeWithSarah”. Sarah is my friend daughters and this made my friend reduce the time he was waiting on social media.
Bonus — What I inspire people to consider when making new year resolutions!
- Read a book or take a class on finance — if you understand basic accounting you are going to be able to make better financial predictions, pay off your debts faster, lower expenses and improve your profit margins.
- Take care of your health. — this is something we all have to improve on. Eating healthier and proper exercise is not only going to allow us to live a great life but is going to help us have more energy for our business and family.
- Become a great leader — everybody leads… you can either lead people to do good things and become better or you can lead them to waste time, drink beer after work or any other bad behavior you can think of. You could help people become more focused on improvement by choosing a business book that everyone has to read each month and than discussed what they like, disliked and what can be applied in your business. This can have a positive influence on your business profits.
- Be more social and spend more time outside the office — in a sales book I’ve read that one of the best insurance company in the US has a salesperson that was doing almost five times more sales than his colleagues. He was never in the office and when he was present, he was staying only 1–2 hours to do some paperwork for the insurance sold. When asked what his secret is he responded: “In the office is not where my clients are. I go play golf with my clients, I go to meetings where my clients are and I create great connections. This allows me to be the best here. I never go to a sales meeting without being recommended before the meeting.” You have to adopt this into your business as well. From time to time go to a business networking event, meet new people, look for creative ways to stay in touch and help people.
- Learn how to hire right — most people say that is hard to find good workers but when asked how many interviews did they had last week most of them say zero. In order to find good people, you should plan to have 1–2 hours per week when you interview people.
Also, I wrote an article where I talk about the 4 traits you should look for in your new employee. If you want to get better at hiring I attached a link to it at the end of this article!
- Have more empathy — get to know your workers and have more empathy. If you know you have someone who has a health problem with someone in the family be understanding and allow him to take care of it… In communication having empathy is going to help you develop better relationships with customers, employees, and investors and see the problems from their perspective.
- Never forget why did you become an entrepreneur — revisiting your why is going to make you feel more enthusiastic and more energized to make things happen. If you don’t know your Why you can check the first article I wrote on Medium at the end.
I hope this article helps you make better plans and make 2019 the year you mark all your new year's resolution goals as “Done”! Happy holidays with your loved ones!
Here are the articles I was mentioning above:
How to get better at hiring
How to discover your Why
Why Did You Become An Entrepreneur?
How A Business Vision Statement Will Grow Your Business
medium.com
👉 Please tap or click “👏” to help others get inspired and learn how to better create plans that get achieved. Also, please let me know what you think about this article by leaving a comment below. I would like to start a conversation!
Start the year right with this free gift!
Are you a small business owner? I just created a guide full of exercises and tips on how to grow your profits. When is the time to start having better returns from your business? Get your guide below!👇👇👇
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +404,714 people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here.
