New beginnings and old habits

Sunset for 2011

Tonight we will no doubt have some Saturday Night Fever to celebrate the coming New Year. Never can I remember so much doom and gloom in the media about the next twelve months.

There are two ways of looking at the New Year. Either we believe everything we read and give in to accept a poor trading year, or we get our heads down, use our brains and get ahead of the action. This is not just trite nonsense (at least I hope not) but a reminder that our future is in our own hands to make the best we can. That is not to pretend that the retail sector is not very weak and for those in the service sector that it isn’t hard to sell add-on services in addition to our normal offering even though that offering is better than everyone else’s.

We small business owners are different from the vast majority of those working. Most of the rest are employees. They are more at the mercy of fate, which, since small businesses constitute the majority of employers, means most of them might suffer from our failures. The rest might lose their jobs because of the failure of large corporates. But at least we can make a difference if we accept responsibility for our fate.

What might we do?

  • Review what has worked well in the past year and see if we can tweak it to make it better.
  • Drop anything which has performed poorly. That might mean dropping a product or a service altogether, even if we have done it for a long time and enjoy it. Of course we should enjoy our work but not if it costs us money.
  • Ask for help. Ask our friends who has helped them and how much benefit can be gained. An investment in help should have a return of several multiples of the cost of our help.
  • Be positive about the future. That means being happy, because happiness makes us better business owners with better ideas.

So I am not going to duck wishing you a Happy New Year because you can and should have achieve a great 2012 with the right approach.

All the very best for 2012.

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One Response to New beginnings and old habits

  1. Felix says:

    Better get your heads down, use your wits and go ahead. Old habits clearly work for new beginnings. Yes, small business owners (SMEs) are an exclusive crowd. Put together, they simply outweigh multinationals. Oh! Thank you for the scintillating conversation!

    I too wish a Happy New Year as also have to achieve a great 2012 with the right approach as a journalist.

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