Use your highs and lows to spur your home business forward

Home business planning tips for the New Year

by Claire Habel

This time last year I wrote a blog about how to stay on track to achieve your New Year home business resolutions. This year I thought I’d focus on how to make the most of all of your previous year’s highs and even lows.

The reason for focusing on this is because home business owners are great at looking at the gap between where they are now and where they want to be! This can often be heightened at the start of a new year. This does of course have its uses but it can also be draining and cause you to feel overwhelmed, which is anything but helpful.

In addition, as an existing business owner, one key asset you have versus those just about to start, is a wealth of insights and learnings about your market and customers as well as the inner workings of your home business.

However, this is something that many business owners fail to really utilise. Increasingly valid experience and knowledge should replace the presumptions and desk research you had to rely on when starting out. Often all that’s needed is a little time spent reviewing and evaluating.

So, before things really pick up after the break, and you’ve still got a little time, here are some personal business planning questions to ask yourself to help maximise what you’ve learnt in the year gone by for the year ahead:

• What one thing did you do or learn that made the biggest difference to your business?
• What was your biggest achievement and what helped you achieve it?
• What do you know now that you didn’t know this time last year and how can you use that in your business?
• If there was one thing you wish you knew or could do to help you grow your business, what would it be?
• If you were asked to advise someone starting a business identical to yours, what would your best advice be?
• If you were asked to advise someone in your exact position about how best to go about growing their business, what would you say i.e. if you weren’t the one having to take the action, what would you recommend they do?
• What one fear or personal barrier has held you back in some way so far? Is there something you can do about eliminating it?

One resolution you could start from today is to make a list of ‘achievements and learnings’ at the end of each month. Reviewing this quarterly will increase your confidence in your ability to take the next required steps. It will also keep important discoveries front of mind to ensure any mistakes you make (which are inevitable) are only made once.

Claire Habel is the founder of Inspiring Futures through which she helps her clients achieve their business potential through Personal Business Coaching, Planning and Marketing Mentoring.

Her next Business Growth Master Class is on Mon 25 February in Wimbledon and always sells out.

Enjoyed this? Read more by Claire about marketing and home business planning