It's a New Year; Here is Your ONLY New Year's Resolution

The year 2009 was a year of change and for all of us, especially small business owners, that's a certainty. Revenues are down, overhead is up, credit is gone, and things are very different.

It is time to do one very important task to insure survival and growth through 2010.

Write a new business plan.

Pretend you are just opening up, a new start up, you have a blank page in front of you and you ask yourself, if I wanted to be in the zxzxzx business (the business you are currently in) what would my plan look like? How much capital would I need and how would I operate, finance it and market my goods or services?

Please do not merely repeat your current situation. This s a huge opportunity to redesign your business based on today's conditions. It's just pencil and paper so anything can be considered, it cost you nothing to ponder viable alternatives.

Consider outsourcing, yes even to China. Consider downsizing dramatically, consider internet marketing, and consider training younger newer employees. Reconsider your product line or service. Maybe you need to expand? Maybe you are in the wrong location; maybe you need strategic alliances, joint partnerships. It is time to consider all the options you may have, all of them, even the impossible ones, as anything is possible when you are dreaming or planning.

What would be the perfect equation for you if you were starting out today? Nothing is impossible so dream away.

Then look at what you have planned and plot a path to deliver that dream... a new business plan.

Sure there may be some shortfalls, capital, employees, machinery, an ad budget, but the real question is then what plan can you adopt within the resources you have? What changes can you make to bring home a working equation that will yield a profit?

Isn't this the key question? So once you have freed your mind to wonder the universe and imagine the best plans possible then you come back to reality and using this vision you design a plan that will work and yield a profit given your resources.

What plan can you devise that is built on what you are doing and adjusted by the vision you have conjured and controlled to a certain extent by your available resources, that will bring home a profit, immediately?

What debt workouts must you engage in to survive?

Now we are talking business. Yes it may mean letting some trusted long term employees go. Yes it may mean abandoning non profitable products, activities, clients, sales programs. Yes it may mean outsourcing. Yes it may mean skipping wholesale and just going retail, maybe just internet marketing, who knows until you have evaluated the unknown.

This is your new year's resolution; create a new business plan based on a clean slate approach. What if you...?

That is the question, with only one rule, it must be immediately profitable.

Then implement it. Do it. You have no option, no alternatives.

What a great new year it will be.