As 2022 approaches, you may be rolling a few ideas for New Year’s resolutions around your head. Although many of these may be personal goals, it’s a good idea to have some that focus on your business, too. The New Year provides an excellent opportunity for business professionals to make positive changes within their company, but you need the right resolution.

This article will suggest a few New Year’s resolutions that business professionals can try out. We’ll look at a variety of ideas, including:

  • Expand your business (but have a reason why)
  • Prioritise promotion
  • Connect and network
  • Be healthy at work
  • Make your business environmentally friendly
  • Spend less time on bookkeeping

Expand your business (but have a reason why)

Most business owners will aim to grow and expand their company, regardless of their New Year’s resolutions. That said, a resolution provides a good opportunity to create a more specific growth plan.

Making a resolution that focuses on growth can help you think about why you’re trying to grow your business. For instance, you may want to hire more employees so that you can work less. Or you may want to increase your profits so you can afford nicer premises.  

Whatever your reason ends up being, remember to use it when you make plans to expand your business. If you want to expand to increase your profits, remember to do so in a way that will help increase sales and reduce expenses. If you’re going to grow by hiring more employees, make sure your employees will help reduce your workload instead of creating more problems and paperwork. 

Prioritise promotion

Some self-employed individuals will forgo the job of promoting their small business in favour of other tasks. This may be because many small businesses prioritise financial matters. After all, who has time for advertising when you’re struggling to pay the rent that month?

While paying off debts and expenses is vital, marketing is no less important. Without it, the only customers you’ll have will be those that accidentally stumble upon your business. This means low sales and low income. 

If you resolve to prioritise the job of promoting your business, you might find it solves many of your other problems. Good-quality marketing means increased sales, which in turn means more income. With more income, you’ll not need to worry so much about any expenses or debts you have.

Connect and network 

If this year has been your first year operating, you may not have had much time to expand your network. It’s important to change that, as when you meet new business contacts, you open yourself up to all sorts of new opportunities. Running a successful business entirely without outside assistance is nearly impossible, so you may want to include something about meeting new people in your New Year’s resolution. 

This is a fairly simple task to give yourself for 2022, as there are hundreds of ways you can expand your network. For example, even something as simple as letting your friends know about your new business can result in you finding a great new supplier or potential client. Other methods include attending networking events or using social media.

Be healthy at work 

Being a business owner is enormously stressful. So if you’ve suffered from work-related stress this year, you might want to resolve to improve your mental health in the New Year. 

Being more aware of your mental health can be very beneficial to the running of your business. People don’t work very well when they’re stressed: you’ll make poorer decisions, and you’ll not be able to communicate as well as you usually do. As such, taking the time to de-stress means that you’ll be able to work more effectively. 

While mental health is vital, you shouldn’t ignore your physical health either. Even small changes to keep your body in good shape can help: you might want to try improving your posture while at your desk or spend less time staring at your computer screen. 

Make your business environmentally friendly 

With recent events like the COP26 summit in Glasgow, people are more environmentally conscious than ever before. And while making your company more environmentally friendly has both helpful and harmful effects on the business itself, its impact on the environment is undoubtedly positive. 

This all means that 2022 might be the perfect year to begin making your business more environmentally friendly. As with most of the resolutions we’ve suggested, you don’t need to make enormous changes. Simple things like recycling more can help massively. If you’re willing, bigger steps like using environmentally friendly packaging can help even more.

While these changes may cost you money, the benefit they’ll have on the environment is worth the price. You might also attract new customers by adopting an environmentally-friendly business model, due to the increased public interest in preventing climate change. 

Spend less time on bookkeeping

Financial management can be stressful and time-consuming when you’re self-employed. This might be because you don’t have a lot of bookkeeping experience or need to spend the majority of your time on other jobs necessary to run your business. 

Whatever the reason, a great resolution is to spend less time on financial admin and more time on whatever made you start your business in the first place. A quick and easy way to make bookkeeping less time-consuming is to begin using Countingup.

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.

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