Ready or not, 2022 it’s well and truly on its way. As we frantically finish up our work, wrap those Christmas presents and get ready to hit the beach for a well-deserved holiday break, it’s also a great time to start thinking ahead for next year, to set some intentions and business goals to work towards.
To get you started, I’ve shared my top tips so you can set yourself up for success from the very start (even from January, 1 if you want to).
1. Review what worked well and what didn’t in 2021
There’s nothing like an end of year reflection to look back on what we achieved and what we learnt. Remembering there is so much gold in learning, it gives us the chance to tweak, improve and make things even better and it’s all part of the business journey.
Take the time to write down what worked well for you, acknowledge your achievements, and reflect on a few things that didn’t go as well as you’d hoped. Then consider what happened over the last year. There was COVID and many lockdowns, did this affect your growth? Did you boom from it? Did you lose or gain customers as a result? Maybe you lost an employee or grew in size. Write it all down so you know your position going into the new year. Compare your financial results and achievements against 2020, you may even surprise yourself with the results.
2. Put an action plan together and set your intentions for the year
When I say put a plan together, I don’t mean a 12-month business plan, I mean a 90-day action plan, accompanied by an overarching strategy of what you’d like to achieve across the 12 months of the year. This will determine the goals and objectives you set for your business. However, an action plan will keep you accountable and on top of your objectives. I like to call this a 90-day sprint, choose one big goal you’d like to focus on and plan all your tasks and activities around achieving this goal for 90-days. This could be: boost your revenue by 10 per cent, hire an employee, create a new service, relaunch your website or re-brand your business. Consider your most valuable goal and prioritise that for the first quarter of the year.
3. Invest in e-learning
Take your business to the next level in 2022 by upskilling and adding more value to your offering which will also boost your profit margin. As a marketing expert and educator myself, I am a huge advocate for education and upskilling, so that you can learn how to do it yourself and expand your skillset. It will also boost your productivity and your efficiency as a business owner as well as save you money and time in the future. It will also provide you with an understanding of what’s involved if you do choose to outsource to an expert later down the track. With the rise in online learning, there has never been a better time to invest in yourself and learn that skill that costs you too much to outsource, from the comfort of your own home and wifi connection. With the challenges the world has faced over the past nearly two years, Australia has seen an increase in online learning of 8.2 per cent, according to the IBIS Online Education in Australia Industry Report, with no sign of it slowing down in 2022. If you ask me, it really is the future of learning and business growth.
