Thursday, December 30, 2010

A New Year's resolution list for small business owners......

In the spirit of the holidays I've decided to give small business owners a ready made, no assembly required, New Year's resolution list. It's only 5 items and it's designed for every business owner.

Here's your list............ yes that means you!

  1. Smile more - business life is never as bad as it seems when things aren't going well. From a business perspective there is always a way out...always.
  2. Read more - I don't care how long you've been in business nor how smart you think you are...you can learn something from someone else. I suggest that you read things that are not directly related to your industry. Skimming your trade journal every month to see who got fired is not real reading.
  3. Plan more - Set aside specific blocks of time, away from the office, where your only job is to think about your business 6 -12 months in the future. In spite of what you may believe, planning is not the same as updating a to do list.  
  4. Say thank you more - to your spouse, your parents, your kids (yep, I said kids), to your customers, to your employees, to your vendors, etc. You get the idea, right?
  5. Wish less, Do more - I recently read (see #2 above) that the best productivity tool in the world is to do something. Makes sense to me, we can talk about doing something or we can actually do something. If we're talking about doing something it's still on the to do list, if we actually do it...by golly the list is shorter.
There's your ready made, easy to use list. And by the way it's my list also for 2011. And... thank you for reading this blog, I'll try to make it better than ever in the new year.

If you don't use this list I'd love to see your list! 

Happy New Year!!!

3 comments:

  1. A very good common sense list for all business owners. When things get hectic it is easy to lose track of one's common sense. Happy New Year

    Diane

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  2. Thanks for taking time to comment Diane, Happy New Year to you!

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  3. Getting away to plan is a great tip. I had one client for abuout 10 years. We would get a conference room at a hotel order a room service lunch and spend the afternoon on his quarterly business plan. You need to free yourself from the distration of your office. Hotel conference rooms are very nutural and have all the amenities you may need to plan. Surprisingly it is not terribly expensive.

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