Tomah Chamber & Visitors Center Newsletter December Newsletter

CHAMBER Chatter Monthly Newsletter dec 2019 Reflecting on 2019 and making 2020 even better! Credit: By Susan Ward, The Balance Small Business The end of the year is a good time to reflect on your business’s progress over the past year and plan how you want your business to develop. Do you want increased success in the coming year or more chances to enjoy the success you’ve achieved? These top New Year’s resolutions are designed to help you do both: strike a better work-life balance and increase your business success in the new year. 1. Learn to Delegate and Do More of It There are so many things to do when you’re running a small business, it’s easy to delude ourselves that we need to do all of them. Then we wonder why we’re so tired and frazzled and have no time to do anything else. Let someone else do some of the tasks for a change. Delegation is the key to a healthy work-life balance. 2. Promote Your Business Regularly and Consistently Too often the task of promoting a small business slips to the bottom of the to-do list in the press of urgent tasks. If you want to attract new customers, you have to make promotion a priority. One of your top New Year’s resolutions should be to hire a marketing expert or take the time to create a marketing plan on your own and follow through. Try some of these low-cost ways to promote your business to get started. 3. Make Business Planning a Weekly Event Planning is vital if you want a healthy, growing business. Business planning lets you take stock of what worked and what didn’t work, and helps you set new directions or adjust old goals. So why do it just once a year or once a quarter? Set aside time each week to review, adjust, and look forward—or even better, make business planning a part of each day. Not only will this help you avoid costly mistakes and stay on track, but you’ll feel more focused and relaxed. 4. Learn Something New What you choose to learn may be directly related or completely unrelated to your business. Learning something new will add to your skills and add a new dimension of interest to your life—another important part of achieving a healthy work-life balance and increasing your business success. Business consultants, trainers, and business coaches can help set you on a path to adopting new skills. Depending on how you choose to learn, you may meet new and interesting people, who may become customers, colleagues, or friends. How will you find the time to learn something new? Delegation. (cont’d on page 6)