When the new year starts rolling around, everyone gets eager to set new goals, review the past year, and reinvent their businesses. It’s not a bad thing, but it might not be a good thing to try to reinvent the wheel for the new year. Yes, goal setting and measuring milestones are important to tracking progress, but abandoning strategies or plans for a shiny new objective in the new year won’t help. It’s better to look at what went right and how you can double down on that. Learn how to maximize your business momentum.
This does not mean ignoring red flags and repeating old mistakes. The first part of goal setting and optimizing processes is understanding what went wrong. However, if you saw a spike in sales for one product, then you say an increase in demand for it. Build on that demand in the new year. If you saw a need for a solution to a problem, then work towards orienting your business to fulfill this need. Expanding your offerings by doubling down on your strong points will help cement you as an industry expert and leader.
Of course, this gets tricky because consumers want to experience new things. They also want new things that work and companies can’t keep pumping out services or products in one niche. However, change the format of your offering. Expanding into adjacent offerings is a great way to stay in the niches that you are successful in while slowly expanding your audience. Diversifying your business this way is much more organic than randomly jumping around looking for a new niche.
Even if there is a little bit of traction, your business can grow.
Carefully crafting a strategy is essential to creating successful results, but if the focus is on getting things perfect next time, then your business will find itself in a state of inertia. While planning is important, it’s also important to remove excess steps that get between dreaming and doing. It’s easy to get caught up in getting things right, but in the end, nothing gets done. Don’t let that be what kills your momentum. When you see traction in one direction, this is when you should pick up speed in that direction.
Another killer of businesses is the inconsistency when implementing systems. Constantly looking around and changing your direction isn’t helpful because you are not giving yourself space to develop any ideas. Starting, stopping, and then pivoting for no good reason will create stagnation because you are hitting the reset button far too often. This type of “hop-and-drop” pacing will hurt your business because there aren’t enough quick returns.
Truly, it doesn’t come down to commitment and discipline. As with anything, mastering your business and building something that lasts comes with taking the time to lay a strong foundation. The tenets of building an evergreen business are simple, but the practice must be consistent and strategic.
