Firstly, may I wish you and your family all the very best as a brand new decade dawns upon us.

The new decade brings with it new opportunities with hope and new aspirations. In addition to these new opportunities, it gives us the means to exclude what we don’t want to carry forward into the New Year.

This holiday season, I would like you to reflect over the last decade. It’s important for all of us to begin by writing down and acknowledging all of our achievements – give yourself the credit you deserve, which is something a lot of us don’t do enough of. Take note of the things that didn’t work in the last 10 years too, and what could have been executed better; and rather than seeing them as failures, look at them as lessons.

Ask yourself now, what lessons have you learnt that will help you over the next 10 years?

Whatever industry you may be in, growth is a dominant factor. 2020 gives us the opportunity to relook everything, not only from a business perspective, but an individual perspective as well. How have you grown over the past decade? How do you want to grow further, over the next 10 years? What new projects do you want to launch in the coming year? Be it business or personal, the only way to get to making dreams a reality is in setting and then achieve worthwhile goals.

Equally important is a review of our existing goals and considering whether or not to reset them. Are they too conservative?

Having met over 5000 business owners in the last three years, much of the time, I think we play too safe. A result of being too conservative, and defensive, is getting attacked by competition, or being caught off guard without a plan – a fine example being environmental issues like the drought. Sometimes, attack is your best form of defence, and by attack, I mean setting the right goals. When you’re setting those goal, make sure that it’s something worth achieving. Take a risk. Put yourself out there a bit more. Once you’ve agreed on the goal, it’s all about setting a strategy to get there.

Here’s a small tip from me, for a simple strategy in getting to your end goal; identify the top three or four things that you must do if you want to achieve this goal? Not the whole 10 or 20 things – just the top 3 or 4 things you must do? Once you set the top three, these can be your goals over a period of time – set a goal for 12 months.

What are the top things you need to do to work towards the goals? Think about the things you are currently doing that are not delivering results. What are the habits? Let’s identify areas that are not delivering results. Are they habits? bad investments? Are they activities?  If they’re not delivering results or value, reassess the situation and stop doing those things. You could be working on the wrong set of customers, focusing on the wrong products or services.

Once you assess the situation and you choose to pull the plug on the people and things that aren’t working out, you will suddenly find yourself with more time and more resources.

Now use that time and those resources to enable you to start putting into action the top three or four must do’s on your list, which will help you get to your end goal.  While you’re at it, get some outside help. It’s not going to be any less challenging in 2020, so seek out the right expertise to take you to another level and offer a fresh perspective. Come to us for an hour of digital growth advisory. That one hour of advisory you spend to build a strategy can give you that leap you deserve.

Finally, on behalf of my team at NetStripes, I would like to wish all our clients, partners, friends and families a holistic growth in all aspects of their lives in the coming year, and very Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

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