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Tag: new year resolution

  • 50 Questions to Ask Your Business Before the New Year | Entrepreneur

    50 Questions to Ask Your Business Before the New Year | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    We naturally begin to review things as our focus shifts to the new year (or a new fiscal year in any season). Assessing, lamenting, dreaming, dreading… Maybe it’s a big initiative that someone in your leadership is spearheading, or maybe it’s something entirely your responsibility to steer.

    Regardless, I wanted to create a set of comprehensive prompts, written in plain language, that hopefully stir up some fruitful reflection, as well as a way to summarize and prioritize them into goals at the end. I’ve collected the prompts into categories to keep us focused.

    The goal isn’t to have a thoughtful response to every prompt but to pay attention to which prompts resonate most with you — and why. Every stone you turn over won’t uncover a gem, but one of them will, and that’s all that matters.

    Brand identity

    1. As our brand leaders, what do we value most in the world?

    2. How would the world be different if our brand grew to become a household name?

    3. If our brand were a person, how would we describe its personality?

    4. How would an outsider describe what makes us unique?

    5. Does our brand reflect the needs and aspirations of our target audience?

    Competitive brandscape

    6. Which of our competitors do we want to become more like? (Think of these as a “north star.”)

    7. Which of our competitors do we want to become less like? (We call this a “south star.”)

    8. Has our market position changed over the past year? How so?

    9. What aspects of our company truly differentiate us from our competitors? List everything that comes to mind.

    10. Are there any emerging trends in our industry that we should consider embracing in the year ahead?

    Last year’s brand performance

    11. What achievements are we most proud of in the past year?

    12. Which strategies or initiatives were most successful?

    13. What were some of our most frustrating setbacks or obstacles?

    14. How have our customers’ perceptions of our brand changed?

    15. In the last year, have we received helpful customer feedback?

    Related: Your Most Burning Questions About Personal Branding, Answered

    Customer insights

    16. How would you describe our ideal customer? Get granular.

    17. What does our customer want? And what do they want more than that? (Keep asking that second question until you run out of responses.)

    18. Where do our customers tend to hang out?

    19. How do our customers prefer to interact with us?

    20. What’s the health of our touchpoints with customers? (Think customer service, support, etc.)

    Talk tracks and messaging

    21. Are we speaking our customer’s language?

    22. Are we offering enough consistency and variety in our messaging?

    23. When did we compellingly tell our brand’s story last?

    24. Does content marketing play a role in our communications strategy? Should it?

    25. Are there words or phrases we consistently use that we should rework?

    Digital presence and social media

    26. In the last year, how have we tried to improve our SEO?

    27. Is our website effective in converting visitors?

    28. Which social platforms seem most beneficial for our brand to interact with prospective customers?

    29. Do we have a content calendar or rhythm to posting on socials?

    30. How can we be more consistent on these platforms?

    Product and service evaluation

    31. How would you rate our product/service’s ability to meet customer expectations?

    32. In the last year, what feedback have we received about our offerings?

    33. How can we enhance our product/service quality?

    34. Is there anything we can wrap-around our product/service to delight our customers?

    35. Are there opportunities to flex from predominantly service into a product, or vice versa?

    Internal culture

    36. Does our internal culture reflect the diversity of our customer base?

    37. How aligned is our team around our brand values?

    38. Does our team feel engaged and motivated, or perhaps lacking in certain areas?

    39. What professional development opportunities can we provide in the next year?

    40. How can we actively improve our recruitment and retention?

    Financial health

    41. What is the current financial health of our brand?

    42. Are we charging enough (or too much) for our product/service?

    43. Are there any creative ways to reallocate our budget to improve our operations next year?

    44. Which new revenue streams could we explore?

    45. What are our financial goals for the upcoming year?

    Related: How to Ask Yourself Better Questions in the New Year

    Innovation

    46. What new cultural trends should we prepare for? (Think AI, Web3, etc.)

    47. How can we promote a culture of innovation within our company?

    48. Are there any strategic partnerships that could benefit our brand?

    49. How will we measure success in the coming year? Should we schedule quarterly reviews of these questions?

    And lastly — read through all of your responses to the previous 49 prompts and:

    50. Dream up a list of five goals for the next year. Get specific.

    Take the guardrails off your mind momentarily and allow yourself to dream big. We often overestimate what we can get done in a week but underestimate what can happen in a year. Dream dreams that your future self might thank you for. Be specific. Use measurable language.

    Related: Setting Measurable Goals Is Critical to Your Strategic Plan (and Your Success). Here’s Why.

    After you have your five goals, prioritize them, listing them in order of significance and how impactful they’ll be to your brand’s growth over the next 12 months. Then, cross out the bottom two.

    This will provide focus and keep three primary objectives at the front and center for you. Now that you have your top three, write the first actionable step under each. What’s the smallest — but most apparent — step you can take towards each goal?

    And look at that: You’re already on your way to a brighter year ahead.

    What’s the best that could happen?

    Related: 16 Powerful Quotes to Unlock Change in the New Year

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    John Emery

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  • Happy New Year’s Eve? Many Business Owners Dread It — Here’s Why.

    Happy New Year’s Eve? Many Business Owners Dread It — Here’s Why.

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    For most people, New Year’s Eve is a big night of celebration, a chance to end the holiday season with a bang, a time to reflect on the year before and to make resolutions about the year ahead. But unfortunately, for some of my clients, New Year’s Eve is not a celebratory occasion. Some would even regard it as the worst night of the year. But, why?

    “Because every year I’m reminded that New Year’s Eve is the end of the year,” one client recently told me. “Which means having to start again at the beginning.”

    Despite all the reports of an economic slowdown, the fact is that most of my clients had a pretty good 2022. But none of them will say that it came easy and this year was particularly hard, what with higher inflation, rising interest rates and continuing economic challenges. But they battled and hustled and worked hard to make the year a success. So what’s their reward at the end of the year?

    They get to do it all over again. Yay! All of our prior accomplishments were short-lived. They’re already in the past. They’ve been wiped clean. January 1st sets everything back to the beginning. And for many business owners, the future is uncertain and unsettling. That’s why they hate New Year’s Eve.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way. If you’re like many of my clients and dread the beginning of a new year I’ve got a way for you to ease your concerns: forecast. Ask yourself this question on December 31st: Do you know what your cash will be on March 31, a mere 90 days from now? If you can reasonably predict your future cash, then won’t feel a little less uncertain about the future?

    Related: 7 Must-Dos Before the End of the Year

    Of course, you will. That’s because when you know the future you can make a plan. and when you have a future plan you can feel better about the present. And you can do all of this with a simple, basic cash forecast. It’s not as hard as you think. All it takes is these four simple steps:

    Step 1: Determine your overhead for the next 90 days

    This should be easy: You know what your payroll will be. You know your lease, debt and rent payments. You know what your utility, internet and other operating costs should be. I’m not asking you to forecast this for all of the year. Just the next 90 days. Write this down.

    Step 2: Agree on a reasonable estimated margin — or two

    This doesn’t have to be exact. Forecasting is an art, not a science. By now I’m pretty sure you know how much gross profit you make on a typical sale which is the sale price less the direct cost of materials and labor to make or deliver it. If you have a lot of products take an average. If you have just a few product lines and it’s easy to calculate, then use two margins and split it amongst your sales accordingly. Again, this is just an estimate. Maybe it’s about 20%. Or 30%. Whatever it is, pick a reasonable number.

    Related: 3 Stress-Reducing E-commerce Tips to Prepare You for the Holiday Rush

    Step 3: Now the “hard” part: Forecast your cash sales

    I put quotes around “hard” because every client I have thinks this is difficult. But it’s not, really. You’re just thinking of 90 days, not the whole year. I’m sure you have a listing of open quotes and open orders (which haven’t been converted to sales). You’ve got receivables that will convert to cash during that period. You probably have some sort of pipeline report from your customer relationship management system. You can talk to your sale team to better understand what deals are cooking. And, assuming you were in business before the pandemic, you’ve got historical sales from similar periods. Put all that together and I bet you’ll come up with a reasonable estimate of sales over the coming three months.

    So now, take those sales. Apply the estimated margin against them and then deduct your overhead. Congratulations: You’ve now forecasted your operating cash. But you’re not completely finished. There’s one final step.

    Step 4: Consider any extraordinary items

    Do you have any big debt payments coming up? Large purchases? A pending large sale? Estimated tax payments? Bonuses? Is there anything else significant you think of that’s out of the ordinary? Figure that in too.

    And there you have it, your final cash profit for the next 90 days.

    Take your cash on New Year’s eve, apply the final number to it (hopefully it’s positive) and you’ll know your cash 90 days from now. Not so tough. What’s tough is doing it the first couple of times. Once you get the process down, and you’re doing it every month, something big will happen: you will feel better. Why? Because you’ll know the future. And that’s what my best clients do. They don’t like surprises. They’re always looking ahead. They do their best to know what’s coming later so they can make their plans now. They take the time each month to forecast their cash because they don’t like to run their businesses in the dark.

    Forecasting is easier than you think. And it’s a critical management tool to help you run your business. Done consistently you will find yourself making much smarter decisions. But best of all, you’ll find yourself enjoying New Year’s Eve much, much more in the future. So Happy New Year.

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    Gene Marks

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