Updating Your Business Plan in the New Year

Updating Your Business Plan in the New Year

The stroke of midnight, January 1st, is a fresh start for many. For some, it marks the beginning of a fitness journey. For others, it means the first step of a self-improvement quest. While most New Year’s resolutions are reserved for individuals, businesses can—and should—take advantage of the “New Year, New Me” mindset. As you enter a brand new year, take a look at your business plan. Here’s how you can update it to accommodate the unstoppable forward march of time.

Gauge Your Progress

How far have you come over the previous year? Take a moment to reflect on your goals from the year that’s coming to a close, and see if you can work towards or elaborate upon those in the upcoming year. For instance, if your goal was to be profitable in 2019, but you’re not quite there by December of that year, don’t hesitate to make profitability your goal in 2020. On the other hand, if you’ve hit profitability in 2019, then 2020 offers the chance to build upon that. Perhaps you’re aiming for certain margins, or maybe you’ve got another investment to make and bounce back from. Whatever the case may be, look at what you’ve accomplished and use that as the starting point for the coming year.

Reorient Your Focus

As your business grows, bringing on more employees and balancing more clients, your focus is bound to shift. If you’ve found your businesses is divvying up its energy differently at the end of the year, evaluate the changes and implement them into a shiny new business strategy for the start of January. This part goes hand-in-hand with developing new goals. Such goals will likely be variations on a theme, focusing primarily around areas of profitability, productivity, and growth. When setting these goals and orienting your focus, consider external factors like environmental changes and consumer demands, as these will form the basis of your success in achieving said goals.

Balance What's Best

What’s best for the company is not always what’s best for the individual, and vice versa. In this regard, it’s important to strike a balance between working to improve the company and working to support your employees. As a simplified example, it’s profitable to have fewer, more productive employees than several employees who are less familiar with how the company operates. However, if you’re hoping to grow both financially and otherwise, having a strong support system of several employees could be beneficial. This is, again, a pared-down example of striking a balance. Don’t be afraid to communicate openly with your employees about changes that you’re considering and pathways you can take. You may find that some options have unwavering support, or that employees will have ideas that you’d not thought of.

This content was originally posted to MichaelBabyakFinancialAdvisor.net.