6 Steps to Create New Year’s Resolutions for Your Small Business
Prefer to listen on Apple Podcasts?
Resolutions can be the difference between growth and ghosting. But, how do you develop small business goals, and then actually reach them? Follow these six simple steps to create impactful goals and watch your business thrive.
New Year, New Goals: Let’s Get Strategic
We love a good New Year’s resolution. Let’s hit the gym 5 times a week, finally buckle down with our nutrition, and get a magical 8 hours of restorative sleep every night.
Easy, right?
But this is unfortunately the same approach many biz owners take when it comes to setting business goals. The goals sound like: “we’re gonna grow 150% YoY,” and “we’re gonna finally outsource those back office tasks we’ve been talking about,” or “we’re gonna consistently post on social and email our list.”
But then what happens? Because the goals aren’t rooted firmly in any actionable plan, they fall away, and by the 1st of Feb, they’re just distant memories.
At Big Bad Marketing, that’s not at all what we want for your business. We want you to create realistic resolutions for your business (and in your personal life!) that challenge you, change you, and ultimately result in more customers and more money.
These 6 steps can help.
Reflect
The best business goals, like personal goals, come from reflecting on the past year.
Ask yourself some questions about what worked last year, and perhaps more importantly, what didn't work.
Not sure what the right questions are to ask? We got you! We built two awesome templates as part of our New Year bundle. Join our email list using this link, and we’ll share our Year in Review and New Year Planning templates for free!)
Reflection allows you to identify what’s already been working and what is sucking up your time that can be let go.
2. Set Your Focus
Now that you’ve got insight about last year, consider the key areas of a functional company to align your resolutions and drive business AND professional growth:
Financial - Think about topics like cash flow, revenue, savings, debts, and dollars to reinvest in your business or professional skills. Which financial goalpost would be most meaningful to aim toward this year?
Health and wellness - Is your business serving your lifestyle goals? What is your ideal work/life balance, and if you’re not there yet, how can you plan to get there?
Continuing education - What areas of expertise do you want to improve? Opt for professional development that will have tangible outcomes for you and your business.
Networking/sales - Do you attend events or do you prefer more casual networking, like handing out business cards around town, and delivering your well-crafted elevator pitch to local prospects? Consider attending conferences or finding other ways to connect with professionals in your industry.
Brand awareness - Do people know about your brand, or is it time to amp up exposure? Does your business have a clear, consistent brand identity? If not, it’s time for a refresh, and Big Bad Marketing can help! Set up a free 15 minute chitty-chatty to get clear on your branding.
Operations - Is there an area that needs to run more effectively? For example, if customers are slow to pay, it could be the result of an outdated payment system. Identify the bottlenecks in your workflow and brainstorm solutions.
3. Create a Vision
Okay, you’ve jotted down some notes about your key growth areas. Now, put it to work!
Use the info to create a vision for the year ahead. Assess the big picture. How do you want your business to look at the end of next year? Visualize it! Write down a few big, bad ideas to make it more concrete.
4. Define Specific Goals
“A goal without a plan is just a wish”
Vague goals lack direction and lead nowhere. The more specific and clear your goals are, the more likely you are to reach them.
Make your goals SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound
Plus, goals should be within your control. Increasing traffic to your website or growing the number of listeners of your podcast isn’t something you can achieve with any certainty. However, the amount of time, type of effort, or the resources you allocate to reach those objectives is. Craft your resolutions with these points in mind.
Let’s look at some sample business resolutions that fit the criteria:
Example Goals
Date: By June 1, 2026
Objective: Broaden our reach and brand awareness
Resolutions:
Send out 10 lead-generation emails per month
Hand out 1 business card per day
Publish one podcast per week
These goals depend strictly on you completing or not completing the task and don’t revolve around how others respond to them.
5. Prioritize
It can be a challenge to juggle 23525 goals at once; heck, it can be a challenge to juggle 5 or 10. Pick the top, most important resolution(s) that best match the north star of your business.
Priority was never meant to be plural.
You can make it easy on yourself to shortlist your top priority by thinking through the needs and dependencies of each goal before you formalize it. Think about who is actually going to be responsible for completing the goal.
Can you feasibly do all the things on your own, or do you need to hire, outsource, or invest in tools? Map out a quick financial and resource budget for endeavors like marketing, hiring, training, expanding your services, etc. If it can all fit easily and neatly into your schedule and budget, go forth. You’ll work out the details later.
If trying to fit it in, even at a glance, is draining, you may need to scale back or work with a marketing partner to develop a strategic plan. This way, you can focus on what you’re passionate about and leave the rest to the professionals.
6. Measure Success
Okay, you’ve done all the steps and built out a prioritized plan.
Fast forward a few weeks/months. How do you know if you’ve fulfilled your resolutions?
Rewind. Start with your baseline. Where were you when you developed the resolution?
Revisit the metrics at a set timeframe, like monthly or quarterly, being mindful that change doesn’t happen overnight. Your yearly goals can (and should!) be broken down into smaller steps so you can continuously measure and adapt or pivot, as necessary.
And don’t forget to celebrate as you go. If you hit the Q1 goal, acknowledge it! Reward yourself or your team for the success, so you’re encouraged to keep the momentum going. If you didn’t hit your target, reassess. Try to understand what threw you off course, and adjust accordingly.
Not Into Resolutions? Do This Instead
If resolutions are so last year, or just not your thing, here are a few other ways to enact change for your business.
Select a word or theme to guide your year. Align your business choices and professional actions toward one overarching message/vision, for example: growth, profitability, or balance.
Make a business bucket list. Highlight individual things you want to accomplish by next year and tick them off the list as you achieve them. While this might not be the most strategic or optimized approach, it will help you press forward toward growth.
Commit to good habits. Much of the success in business (and personal life) is the result of establishing good habits. Whether you’re a solopreneur or you have a team, adopt specific practices, like no-meeting days, routine times for responding to emails, and a set number of weekly sales calls. Consistency is the precursor to success.
Do nothing at all and hope for the best. We’re not recommending this, but if you’re happy with the way things are going and don’t want things to change (even for the better), just keep doing what you’re doing.
Turn Resolutions Into Results
Change happens incrementally and over time. Don’t expect to see the results tomorrow. Commit to your resolutions by sticking to the steps. Hand out those business cards, send those emails, and stay on track. Business growth is on the other side of your ongoing effort!
