In a fiercely competitive business and startup environment, failing to build on your success with tangible goal setting can make or break your growth and development. 

While many individuals are making their own personal New Year’s resolutions about their health, lifestyle and relationships, perhaps more important for you this year is to have goal setting that enables you to build on your success from last year and continue to see your business grow. 

Achieving goals will only happen if you make them practical but also valuable to your personal growth. Here is a list of realistic tips and ideas on New Year’s resolutions that you can use to get your goal setting in place for an even better 2019.

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1. Learn to delegate better

As a business owner, it can be very easy to want to do everything yourself just so that you know it’s done right. While that may be all good and well in your initial start-up days, as your business grows, it’s seemingly impossible to do everything yourself. There is no doubt a bunch of tasks that are simply mundane or take you too much time. Delegating these tasks to someone else could mean that the job is done in much less time. 

If you’ve hired the right team of people to work with you, then put trust in your employees that they will be able to get things done. Giving people more responsibility helps you to build a better team, and of course, you can always look at freelancers to work with you on an as-needed basis. 

2. Be more focused

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How many hours of the day do you actually work? It’s very easy to lose focus during the day when a message comes through on social media, an old friend calls, or you want to research on a new gadget that you want to buy. If you actually added all the time up that you wasted on social media, do you think you would be disgusted or ok with it? 

You can definitely be more productive by doing some goal setting that requires you to work for a certain period of time each day without checking your social accounts or answering personal calls. There are actually apps now that you can use on your computer to track how much time you spend on different websites each day, so you may want to consider using one of these to discover how much time you actually waste on the internet.

3. Develop or improve your digital presence

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If a business doesn’t have an online presence, do they really exist? In this day and age, not being visible online can often mean that you miss out on potential clients or customers. More and more consumers are consistently checking websites, reviews and social pages of a brand that they are interested in to confirm that they are indeed spending money on a reputable product or service. 

If you can’t be found or you have limited presence, then people will simply move on to the next brand or company on their list. Once you have a website, build a blog, create an Instagram and Facebook page, and be consistent about sharing awesome content that aligns with your brand. 

4. Get better work/life balance

No one on their death bed has ever said, “I wish I had worked more.”

As a business owner, one of the most important New Year’s resolutions that you can have is to have a better work/life balance. As much as you want to put in the hard yards and work on scaling your business, if you are burnt out then you simply won’t be able to achieve your goals or show any development. 

Even if you still need to work 60 hours a week for now, ensure that you are spending time with your loved ones, getting enough sleep and exercising regularly. 

5. Pay it forward

Giving back is often part of many people’s goal setting, but they are unsure how to do it. As a business owner, there are two things that you can do:

1. Offer to be a mentor for another startup in a similar industry as yours.
2. Get involved with the community whether that’s volunteering, donating profits or organizing a fundraising event. 

Using your knowledge and success to help others not only feels good as a New Year’s resolution, but it also brings positive attention to your business. Strengthen your own business networking, and potentially see what you can do for the next generation of industry leaders by checking out our academy events, or just plan ahead for the new challenges in 2019 by taking a look at our flexible coworking space!