The close of the holiday season can sometimes lead to the January blues, leaving business owners feeling drained and unmotivated. “I’m exhausted” are the words I’ve been hearing from business owners with alarming regularity this month. 

The December push to hit end-of-year goals, wrap up outstanding projects, and complete the year on a high note with pressure to keep up with the Joneses’ holiday preparations and celebrations can have serious repercussions when the New Year rolls around.

January is typically the time people want to make changes in their lives and their business. So, here are 5 tips for boosting morale and creating enthusiasm for a fresh start.

1. Review Your Business Plan. Use your business plan to align your core focus, annual priorities, and initiatives to your quarterly actions. Your plan is a compass, so use it to calibrate yourself to what you want to create for yourself and your business this coming year.
2. Connect with Your Network. If you’re in business, then you are in the business of relationships. Commit to reconnecting with your network of active and inactive clients, colleagues and referral partners. Continuing to nurture relationships and having a healthy dialogue with the people in your community breeds new opportunities and a different perspective.
3. Ditch the Distractions. Stay focused, protect your time, practice good energy management and create better boundaries. Use your quarterly management accountability plan to develop monthly action plans and weekly to-dos that direct your activities so that you stay focused on what’s important. Park any good ideas and say no (or not now) to things that aren’t directly aligned with your business strategy and annual goals.
4. Take Clarity Breaks. Schedule ‘whitespace’ into your calendar regularly. This is an appointment with yourself. Whether it’s a half-hour daily, two hours weekly, or a half-day monthly, it’s up to you. The point is to take yourself out of the weeds of the day-to-day operations of running your business to take time to think. It’s in the whitespace of being time instead of doing time that your creativity, inspiration and innovative ideas can rise above the noise in your head and land into your conscious awareness.
5. Enlist Support. Being a lone wolf can make things hard and no fun. Assemble your team of peers and mentors and hire a business coach to help you strategically grow your business, so you can be more proactive and work smarter, not harder. Without a sound strategy and a plan, it’s all too easy to become a busy fool. A business coach can work with you to quickly assess where your efforts should best be directed to capitalize on your business strengths.

When I work with my clients to help them navigate their business growth to multiple six and seven figures, I assist them in transforming their big-picture vision into an operationalized strategic growth plan with quarterly management accountability plans that guide big rock initiatives toward tangible goals. I offer personalized guidance to help them focus on the right things that will lead to growth, profitability and sustainability.

Imagine if you had the confidence and the clarity to grow your business with more purpose, profit and ease. 

How would a more proactive and focused approach to running your business impact you, your employees, your clients and your bottom line?

To your success in 2023!