After the holidays, sometimes it can be difficult to get back into the routine of running your home-based business. Many of us slow down or take time off during Christmas and the New Year, but now it’s time to jumpstart your business and get out of the holiday slump.
In this post, we’re going to give you 6 actionable strategies to help you get your business off to a great start in 2018. Whether you have a home-based business or a traditional business, these tips will help you move forward and accomplish big things this year.
- Set your big goals for the year
Chances are you’ve already set your annual goals. If you haven’t, be sure to go back and read our tips on how to accomplish your goals this year. It’s important to start there so that you know what you are aiming for in your life and business.
- Break your goals down
Once you’ve set your annual goals, you’ll want to break those down into small goals. As we mentioned in our post about goal setting, many people break down their goals into into 90 day or quarterly goals. From there, we suggest you go even further and chunk them down into monthly goals.
Let’s say you want to add 10 new business partners to your team in 2018. Instead of focusing on 10 the whole year, you can break that down to an average of about 1 per month. This feels much more achievable and makes it easier to jumpstart your business.
- Create a vision board
Many people find it helpful to visualize their goals for the year. You don’t need to spend a lot of time doing this, but simply finding a few photos and pasting them to a large piece of cardboard can be helpful. Or, you could create digital vision board by taking screenshots of the things represent your goals for the year and turn it into a background for your computer or phone. Finally, you might want to use Pinterest and create a board dedicated to your 2018 goals.
- Schedule your business hours and stick to them
Many are challenged with getting back into a routine after the holidays or a vacation.
It’s vital that you put your business hours down on paper and stick to them. When you create clear boundaries for your work time, you also free up your time for family, friends, and other activities.Another important aspect of blocking your work time is not allowing other things to creep into that time. Working from home has many perks, but it’s easy to allow yourself to start doing other things, such as laundry, dishes, or cleaning the bathroom. You wouldn’t do those things if you were at a regular 9-5 job, so don’t do them during your work hours at home!
- Focus on business-building activities first
Once you have your business hours set, make sure you spend the first part of your day or time on the key activities that will build your business. For example, make your phone calls to set appointments instead of spending an hour organizing your file cabinet. Often we allow ourselves to get “busy” doing non-essential tasks in our business. Instead, make sure you prioritize the tasks that will move the needle forward in your business.
You may even want to build in a reward system for yourself if you find that motivating. In some home-based businesses, there are already incentives in place for achieving certain goals each month. But you might want to create your own incentive system if you know that will help keep you focused. Challenge yourself to do the hardest activities first thing in your day, and then give yourself a small reward once you’ve accomplished them.
- Find an accountability partner
The most important aspect to jumpstarting your business and reaching your goals in 2018 is to have accountability. There are many benefits to having an accountability partner or group, and often this is the thing that helps someone make progress quickly in their business. Your accountability partner might be a mentor or a peer. It could be someone on your own team or someone in a totally different business. It doesn’t really matter, as long as they are someone who will help hold you accountable to your goals. Your accountability partner should not be someone who will allow you to make excuses constantly.
Once you choose your accountability partner, make a plan with that person (or group). Choose a time to meet, talk or even text regularly so that you can check in and report progress towards your goals. Having a weekly or even daily check-in will make sure that you stay focused on the right activities so that you can report what you’ve been doing to your partner or group.
You can use these 6 strategies to jumpstart your business at any time, but the beginning of the year is a perfect time to get re-started. Don’t just dream about accomplishing those big goals in 2018–take action and make this your best year YET!