Our New Year's Resolutions for Your Business

Just in time for a new year I thought I should write a bit about new year’s resolutions in terms of businesses. We all know that businesses are people too, and just like people businesses pick up bad habits. If you look at New Year’s Resolution on wikipedia you will find the common ones. I am going to explain how each applies to your business.

Lose Weight

Fire customers or employees that are not contributing to your bottom line.
For instance ING Direct’s CEO in his book The Orange Code says:

When traditional banks try to please everyone with everything they do, it can’t be a lot of fun. A good retailer, however, knows that satisfying everyone all the time is a bridge too far. Only accepting customers who like your products and how you sell to them — this is a different way to do business for a bank. Fire customers? That might be harsh. Say no politely to the customers whose behavior does not fit the business model, and you are halfway there? Yes, and watch customer satisfaction go way up as a result. Do it consistently, and you begin to see the other side of retail success.

See though it sounds harsh, it’s perfectly reasonable, you can come up with nicer ways of putting it when you call your employee into your office or write your customer a letter letting them know how you are letting them go. You can hire me to do it, if you don’t feel that you have the kahones.

Gain Weight

Get more customers, hire more employees. These are hard times and so it may be difficult to do either, but they should be on your list of potential to-dos when the time is right. Perhaps not this year, or the next, but eventually you will want to hire new people or market better to get more business.

Get out of Debt

Getting out of debt is hard for both businesses and people. Getting out of debt essentially involves increasing the bottom line by “losing weight” (see above) or “saving money” (see below) and properly manging the money and resources that you have (see your CFO or financial planner). Unlike people, debt for business can be good as you can write it off. (Actually, I fibbed a bit, people too can write off some debt, too, see your financial planner!)

Save Money

This goes with losing weight (see above) and getting out of debt (see above), in this case find new suppliers. Businesses need money to grow, so saving money should be definitely somewhere on the strategic list for most businesses.

Get a Better Job

For businesses jobs come from clients and customers. Getting a better job means finding better clients. Better clients come from your marketing efforts, so if you can spare a bit of coin, you might consider it, eh?

Get Fit

Nobody likes “tubby”, I should know. For businesses this means being lean, and that translates to strategy. Having a good strategy and tactics with which to implement those strategies is key for a business looking to stay fit.

Eat Right

Eating right for businesses has everything to do with your suppliers. Are they doing their job and providing your quality materials that your customers appreciate? No. Get rid of them!

Get a Better Education

For businesses education means either better IT systems, come see me, or training your employees. One very effective way to do that is buying your employees any books that they want for work. You can set up a small library and stack it with books of your employees’ choice. Amazon is a good place to buy such books.

Drink less Alcohol

Drinking less for businesses mean less excess. Also, better health for your employees. So having an awareness program or a meeting or two and talking with everyone about options for those who might be afflicted is a good idea. I do know that in downtown Calgary, we do have problems like this — so this isn’t way out there.

Quit Smoking

It is very difficult for businesses to survive if they do things which hurt themselves and the environment. Quitting smoking for businesses means going green, this helps build brand equity and reduces your impact on the planet. You should advertise the fact that you “quit smoking” to all your employees, just so they know you care and will call you on it if they see you lighting up!

Reduce Stress

If there is a machine that can make the lives of your employees better, why not buy it? Or how about hiring a yoga instructor, or paying for your employees to take yoga classes. That could go a long way to making them better at doing their job, and loving your for it!

Take a Trip

Vacations are always nice, aren’t they. They can be a great team building opportunity for your employees. So if you have a bit of change, why not invest in a trip? It could mean better morale for everyone. Need someone to help you choose a trip, I would love to do that for you, write me up!

Volunteer to Help Others

Giving is definitely in, so go ahead and give. Then brag about it on Moby Pages, your customers will love you for it!

Be Less Grumpy

Nobody likes to work for unhappy people. So if management is not happy, give them something to be happy about. A company that is not happy can not make their customers happy and should not be in business.

Be more independent

Do you really need your suppliers? Can work with without Windows or Microsoft Office? Go ahead give it a try, it might not be so bad after all.