6 Tips to setting yourself and your business up for success in 2024

It’s that time of year when you are either working like crazy to get everything sorted before Christmas, or you are finally starting to wind down.  Whatever the case for you, it’s now that you should be setting time aside to do some planning so that you can start 2024 on the right foot.  You want to create a clear plan of how you are going to start the year in order to end it in the way you envision.  In other words, fast forward 12 months and have a think about how you’d like to reflect on this time next year, what you would want to have achieved?

To help ensure 2024 is a great year for you and your business we’ve put together some tips of area’s you could consider and plan before you take your break over Christmas.  If you’re reading this grab your calendar and block out 2 or more hours to do some planning before Santa comes:

1. Reflect on the previous year:

What and who worked well for you in 2024.  Identify areas your business excelled, areas for improvement and any positive and negative surprises that arose during the year. 

2. Clarity of Vision and goal setting:

Getting a clear vision of what you want to achieve long term and over the next 12 months is critical to setting up your business and your life in a way that makes you truly happy.  Getting clarity of your long term vision can take days, weeks, months and even years in some cases.  So if you’re struggling to get that real clarity of how you’d like to see your life and your business - a little tip is to take money out of the equation and give yourself permission to really dream.  This can be hard - but go on, give it a go! 

Once you have a clear longer term vision, you can set the wheels in motion to create short and medium term goals, and then a clear action plan on how you intend to reach those goals. 

3. Develop a strategic plan for the year:

Grab a 12 month planner, or draw it up on a piece of paper and plan out your events, meetings and planning days for the year ahead. Things that you can include might be:

• Awards nights
• Team meetings (weekly, monthly, quarterly etc)
• Individual one on ones (weekly, monthly etc)
• Client information sessions (in person or online)
• Team Planning Day/s 
• Leadership Team Planning Day/s
• Celebrations (Christmas party, anniversaries etc)
• Themed days (Master Chef team cook off, bring your dog to work day, administrator day etc)

Once finalised we recommend providing a professional looking calendar to the team so they can see what the year ahead holds in terms of events etc.  You may even want to put any financial targets or other goals on this too. 

4. Visual overview of your business and your workspace: 

If you have an office or a shopfront physically go and have a look at what your business looks like from a distance.  Does it need a freshen up of paint, new signage, clean windows or an updated reception desk etc.  Perhaps ask a brutally honest friend to do this for you if it’s not really your thing.  You and your team should have pride in how your business presents to the public - it says a lot about you.

Now, have a wander around your premises inside.  Does it need a freshen up, new paint or carpet, or perhaps a steam clean.  Some colourful artwork or some plants that are actually alive (apparently they need water - who would have guessed)!  Do you need to move some desks around, or even get some new furniture?  When we had our offices we would organise an annual clean up day.  The staff could come in casual clothes (usually last week in December) and we’d all spend a few hours throwing out rubbish, tidying workstation areas,  clearing out storage cupboards, cleaning out the kitchens and definitely removing those mouldy Tuppaware containers from the fridge!  It meant we came back to an organised, clean and tidy environment after the Christmas break. 

5. Analyse your finances: 

This one is usually the one most people don’t look forward too, but of course it is essential.  Ideally you review your figures on at least a quarterly basis anyway, but this is a good time to get your P&L’s out of Xero and review what you spent and what you earned.  What areas are going well, what not so well. How can you improve the bottom line with cost cutting (like all those subscriptions you no longer use), without taking away from the expenses that help make you revenue in the bigger picture. 

 Also look at any opportunities for growth that you might want to pursue in the year ahead and what you need to do to develop those areas. 

Work out your budgets for spending on things like staff training, events, marketing etc. 

6. Staff Plan:   

Based on what you want to achieve in the year ahead, look at the structure of your business.  What will need to change in order for you to achieve the growth or changes you are aiming for? What structure will you need in your departments and what staff will you need to potentially hire, make redundant, or move departments?  And, how will you need to facilitate this?

Write a list of anyone you know that you’d like to work for you in the future and perhaps plan to set up a coffee meeting with them and start building some rapport. 

We hope this has given you some inspiration to get planning for the year ahead.  We want you to look back in 12 months time and be proud and impressed with what you’ve achieved. 

For more ideas and helpful tools for your planning sessions - go to our Business Resources page on our website - there are lots of downloadables that will help with planning ahead.

We can also assist with you with your next “Planning Day”, so feel welcome to reach out if you want to know more about how we can help!