As we enter the final weeks of the year, you are undoubtedly hunting for gifts for loved ones. While these are obvious year end considerations, you should also be reviewing your business strategy for the year ahead.
Whether your fiscal year ends in December or doesn’t, the end of the month is a good time to take stock of how things went in the last year especially seeing how powerful the effect of the recession has been on business . While the old saying is “time flies”, it is particularly true for businesses. Massage practice owners tend to be fixated on two to three month time periods (mainly as these are survival periods). The downside to this, is that they can fail to see developments over longer periods of time.
After you’ve taken care of all your holiday gift purchases, you should have some down time in the last two weeks of the month. Business tends to slow down as people deal with the holidays, People travel to see family and so on. This is the perfect time to go back and consider your business year. Specifically, you should focus on where your business was in January. What were your goals at that time? Did you meet them during the year? If not, why? You will almost always be surprised when you realize how the business developed over the last year. This global view can give you a better perspective and evaluation of how things are going.
Business Strategy
After contemplating 2009, you should give consideration to what you want to accomplish and where you want to be by the end of 2010. Ask yourself the following:
1. What is a reasonable revenue increase for 2010 compared to 2009?
2. Are their additional or services you should pursue, in order to expand appeal of your practice?
3. Are their or services you should perhaps drop (after all if you are advertising on yellow pages for example you may be wasting advertising space talking about a particular service nobody wants instead of emphasising those that people do?
4. If a strategy is underperforming, does it make objective sense to continue pursuing it or cut your losses?
5. What are your biggest frustrations and how can you deal with them?
6. Which vendors or suppliers do great work for you and which don’t?
Many other questions will run through your mind. There are no wrong ones. What is important, however, is you write the goals and thoughts down and keep them somewhere private. Next December, you should pull them out and see how things are going.
