A New Year for Small Businesses
by Stuart Livesey
Ok, so the holidays are over and it’s time to get back to the hard work. While I’m not a fan of trying to divide the life of your small business into the old year and the new year the end of a calendar year does provide a point where you can look back at the things you’ve done in the last 12 months, reflect on what has worked and what hasn’t and then plan ahead for the next 12 months.
That’s certainly what Toni and I have done and it has been interesting to compare where we were 12 months ago to where we are now. Toni’s business certainly has grown in those 12 months and we’ve learnt some valuable lessons.
Along the way we have lost one or two customers because we couldn’t meet their expectations. We have also dismissed a couple of customers who had unreal expectations and made unreasonable demands on us. And we have picked up plenty of new customers who are quite happy with what we produce for them.
We’ve also decided to diversify our business to prepare for the years ahead. We will soon be opening a small online store selling some specialty products and we’re sure we’ll have plenty of lessons to learn and share with you in the months ahead.
So we wish you and your small business well for the new year and hope it will be just as interesting for you as it will be for us.
