January, 2021
Business Processes and Planning
Now is the time to evaluate your business processes and planning.
You’re here. You made it! It’s a new year – which means it’s time to reflect on your business, implement stronger, more streamlined processes, and plan for growth in 2021. We’re here to help as you take the next step in business processes and planning.
This month’s guide shares:
How to Jump Start Your Business Processes & Planning for the New Year
Begin with last year:
Every year brings new challenges and lessons learned. As small business owners, our best way to create new business processes that raise the bar is to evaluate processes, successes and failures from the prior year. Sit down with your financials, goals and more from 2020 to assess where you hit the mark, how you can improve and what your upcoming goals are. Focus on creating or tweaking systems, processes and workflows using a client workflow automation software to impact your entire business and build a streamlined business. Get insight from Leah’s article to get started. Finally, learn about how to boost your profits with key workflows from Preston.
Goal (and boundary) set strategically:
Once you’ve set your new business processes, goal set – and boundary set – to establish a baseline for your business so you know when your processes and plans have succeeded. Learn about goal setting both professionally and personally from Lisa and stop wasting time wishing away the days with goal setting tips from Kate. And while big goals and huge dreams are great for a successful business plan, equally as important (and perhaps even more as Janelle shares) is focusing on boundary setting and caring for yourself so you can succeed in business.
Don’t forget about marketing:
Marketing touches so many elements of business. Since it’s something you may feel like you’re always thinking about… you may actually forget to focus on the marketing processes and planning for your business. Instead of getting lost in the day-to-day of endless posts on social media, do an audit on your marketing plan. You may encounter elements of marketing that you’re not taking best advantage of and get a process in place to create content, share it with your audience and bring in more of your ideal customers.
What's Inside - Business Processes and Planning
Leah Weinberg
There is no better way to start evaluating your business processes and planning than by tracking what your business has looked like previously, making changes accordingly and automating elements to ensure you’re managing inquiries and monitoring leads well, and taking clients through a seamless process from onboarding to offboarding. Leah shares the in’s and out’s of automation and how to uplevel your business process in 2021 in this article.
Tanya Hirschy
We all have a “messy closet” in our home, don’t we? Unfortunately for many business owners, that messy closet is their bookkeeping and accounting. It often gets left to clutter up over the year until a frantic clean out before tax season. This year, start fresh with a business process that will streamline bookkeeping for your small business. Whether you’re a freelancer, creative entrepreneur or small business owner, if you earn money doing what you love, check out this article on key business processes and planning from Tanya.
Janelle Christian
It may seem counterintuitive to think that one of the best business planning tools you can find is boundary setting, but Janelle shares her steps to creating, setting, sticking to and reevaluating boundaries in order to give yourself space to prioritize your needs, and ultimately to build the strongest business possible with the most resilient of owners around. With her 5 tips to implementing this key business planning tool, you’ll becoming a boundary boss and experience the best version of yourself and your business yet.
Vicky Wu
Website, social media, blog posts, SEO and more – marketing encompasses many different things. This is why in order to properly business plan, you need to keep track of your marketing goals and results. Vicky shares her top tips and things to think about when performing a DIY marketing audit. With her guide, you’ll be able to set yourself up for a strategic 2021 marketing plan that connects you with your audience, gets eyes on your content and fine tune your existing marketing strategies.
Preston Lee
When you’re an entrepreneur, you wear a lot of hats… which means you’re in charge of a lot of businesses processes and planning. Preston shares 6 workflows that will keep the plates spinning and you sane, and also will increase profits. From how to pitch and sell to getting testimonials and referrals from clients, his times make every element of business streamlined and revenue-boosting.
Kate Presto
You could spend your days just wishing for a change in business. OR you could spend your time with these 4 simple goal setting tips that will help you stop wasting time and shift your business into committing to change, making progress and refining your goal to ensure you’re moving in the right direction. Plus, Kate includes specific number crunching as an example of how to put her tips into practice.
Lisa Anhaiser
There is no denying that personal and professional goals are uniquely intertwined, especially for small business owners, freelancers and creative entrepreneurs. When our personal life spills over into our businesses and vice versa, we must map out our goals strategically to find what area of life brings us the most satisfaction vs. the least. Lisa shares details and insights on how to incorporate business change for future happiness when business planning.
Disclaimer: The advice featured in this guide and on the blog was sourced from our community members for sharing general information and knowledge. For specific legal, financial, tax, mental health and professional advice, please consult an authorized professional.