As a business owner, you start with a fantastic idea or sideline passion and before you know it, you have a fully fledged business. Once the business starts taking off, you soon begin to realise that certain aspects of your business might not be living up to the ideas you had when creating the business concept. An example of that would be having a business that is always open during the holidays vs one that is not. Perhaps you are frustrated by the fact that you’re always open and want to do something to be able to take a holiday with the rest of the world or perhaps you are closed during that time and want a business that can benefit from the sales it can make during these periods. Whatever your hopes and dreams are, this month’s blog article is designed to get you excited about your business again and spark your creativity to create your dream business.
Here are 4 Key Considerations towards creating new years resolutions for your business:
1. Does my business make enough money / meet my financial goals in terms of profitability?
If your answer is ‘no’ to this question you have only 3 ways to change things;
- Make More Sales
- Decrease Expenses
- Reduce Costs
Entrepreneurs can be very optimistic in their forecasting about revenue growth and often disappointed by the results achieved. But do they know how to fix these problems? In our experience there are three major things you can do to really make a huge financial impact on your business’s sales figures. Decreasing expenses and reducing costs are self explanatory. To focus on increasing sales you need to first assess the 80/20 of your revenue stream. By simply increasing the sales of the 20% that cause the 80% of the revenue, you will see your numbers climb quickly. By utilising our transactions reporting features, you can study the statistics of your sales and determine this fairly quickly. Simply export your sales to excel and analyse from there. So your New Year’s resolution will be to focus more on the 20% that produces 80% of the result.
2. Do you feel overwhelmed by workload?
Having recently read the “4 hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris, the idea of working less and achieving more really struck home. A business will always have a ton of demands on the business owner and how you delegate or what you choose to take on is all on you. To assess where things go wrong, you’ll need to sit down and figure out where most of your time is wasted and what your key skills are that add the most value to your business. Small Business Owners often get involved with things like building your own website or doing your own marketing, admin, stock orders, appointments, having a ton of meetings etc. By reading this book you will come to realise how much you can actually allow other people to do for you or eliminate useless tasks from your life forever. WAPPoint’s online portal can help you by simplifying all of your card machine processes and we’ll provide a dedicated account manager to oversee your account so you don’t waste time on help desk calls. So your New Year’s resolution will be to focus on getting rid of time wasters that prevent you from having fun in your business.
3. Does your business allow you flexibility?
The whole reason we start businesses is so that we don’t have to work 8-5 like every other employee, but then we end up working 12-14 hour days. How you structure your business is your choice but ultimately it should give you freedom from the barriers of time. Depending on where you are in life right now, you may want to dedicate more time to your kids now or spend more time traveling. Whatever your desires are it’s time to create that reality for yourself. If you have a business that is open during odd hours or holidays and you want to be on holiday like everyone else, simply find ways to automate the business through technology or employ people to work in the business during those times. With a little bit of planning, anything is possible. We’re here for you 24/7/365 and we’ll take care of your card machine needs during holidays so that you can be rest assured your business can keep transacting. So your New Year’s resolution is to create your schedule according to your personal needs.
4. Do you have time for strategic planning and researching the markets in your industry?
You should never be so busy in your business that you end up taking your eye off the ball. Making time for strategic planning and researching your competitors and industry trends is an important part of staying in the game. You may be sitting on the next “Million Dollar Idea” so put aside your usual workload for the first 1-2 hours of the day and start with the task of planning your business’s future each morning. Once your future is secured, you can begin with the rest of your day. This way you are guaranteed to see growth into the future and not be blindsided by a sudden change. In order to avoid distractions, DO NOT start your day with your emails. This is an endless task that seems to take up most of our days so avoid this during your strategic planning hours. If you have a lot of distractions, tell people you are on Do Not Disturb and switch off your phone etc. So your New Year’s resolution would be to start your day with an hour of uninterrupted creative thinking and planning.
Whatever your goals are for 2019, we’re here for you and we’re excited about taking your business where it’s never been before…
