Making 2022 Your Best Year Yet
December 22, 2021 - 9 minutes read
You want to create a business people love, but it’s not uncommon for people to focus solely on monetary benefits. Unfortunately, you need to think beyond money (don’t worry, it’s a good thing) to grow and build your business.
As 2022 approaches, we think it’s crucial that you start the year off properly by making goals that not only grow your business but make you happier in the process.
3 Questions to Break Out of the Money-Only Mindset
Your business is an extension of you, and the stresses of your business will inevitably impact your day-to-day life. We want you to sit down and ask yourself a few questions to break out of the money-only mindset:
- What do you hope to build that’s more important than money? Perhaps you want to build a business or offer a product to help nonprofits succeed. Write down the things you want to build that are far more important to you than the money they generate.
- What do you do better than anyone else? There’s something your business is really, really good at. Write this down because maybe honing in on this further will bring more value to your customers.
- What’s your ideal workday look like? As an owner, it’s easy to give up too much of your life for profits. When you answer this question, it should include:
- What customers do you want to speak to daily?
- What tasks do you prefer doing?
- How many hours a day do you want to work? Most owners work 50+ hours a week, but you should strive to reach a work-life balance that is best for you.
Answering all three of these questions will help you move on to the rest of the process to make 2022 the best year yet.
When the owner of a business is happier, they’re able to put all of their energy into the business to make it grow. However, when an owner is overworked and barely has any time to themselves, their business will likely eventually suffer.
You can delegate tasks and find ways to improve your quality of life as a business owner, which will transcend into other areas of your business.
Evaluate and Capitalize Where Your Team Shines
Your team hits home runs often, and you need to evaluate these “wins.” Why? You can capitalize on these areas even further when you understand what you’re doing well. After all, you’re already good at this, so:
- Stop doing and start thinking. You might need to get creative here, but it’s vital that you really narrow down what your team does great day after day.
- Dive into the market and see what everyone is talking about.
- What are your customers saying or looking for that you don’t offer?
- What solutions are lacking in the marketplace that your team can capitalize on?
Once you know what the market is talking about, what your customers want, and understand what’s missing in the marketplace, it’s time for you to innovate. Perhaps you have a great service offering widgets. Well, you may find that no one is offering widgets with 100% training on how to use them properly to grow a business.
Approximately 35% of businesses blame weaker sales for lower profits, but what if all you need to do is reevaluate and fill a void in the industry?
Since your team is already great at training in other aspects of your business, this may be an opportunity that you can capitalize on this year.
However, before taking action, you need to dig a little first.
Dig Into Supporting Data
You know what you would like to offer, but can you commit enough time and resources to bring this new product or service to market? Some owners are masters of product launches, but others aren’t the best in this realm.
A few things to consider are:
- Have you done this in the past?
- Do you have numbers to support this new product or service?
For example, you have to consider whether your innovative idea will be profitable. If it will be profitable, what does your profit by customer look like?
You should look at your historical data to determine:
- Profit potential
- Cost to bring the product to the market
- Demand for the product
Model for the Future
Sales and profits are two very different things. When you have data to support innovating in the industry, it’s time to run a what-if analysis. The what-if analysis will cover several key areas: what if you sell 1,000 widgets, but what if you sell 10?
Your what-if analysis should break down when you can recuperate R&D costs, how much profit you can expect from sales, and what happens if the product is a success or failure.
Perhaps you need to sell far beyond current demand to make a profit, and if this is the case, you might want to hold off on this idea.
Strategize and Implement
You have a great, new idea backed by as much data as you can gather, but your current position in the market may require you to reposition yourself to offer this new product. Additionally, you’ll also need to determine:
- Value proposition. Why would buyers choose you over someone else selling a similar product or service? What value are you bringing to the customer?
- Sales. What will your sales strategy be? Can you leverage current relationships to make sales? Create a process to reach new customers.
Once you have your strategies in place, it’s time to implement and test. Some of the greatest products failed initially because of market position and strategy. However, if you experiment and perform A/B testing, you can use data-backed approaches to meet your sales goals.
Finally, you’ll want to fail fast and fail forward. If you haven’t heard of this concept before, it’s one that SpaceX does extremely well. The company fails at a rocket launch, gathers data, and learns from its mistakes.
In business, you only learn from doing, so the more you fail and analyze, the more you can move forward with your business.
Heading into 2022, you should spend time figuring out what you do best. Your team has a wealth of experience already, and if you’ve been in business for a while, you likely have data that points you in the direction of profitability.
However, you need to step back and look at the bigger picture to see how you can innovate, generate more profits and be happier, too.