6 Tips to Make Your Professional New Year Resolutions Stick
2016 is going to be a big year for marijuana business. Last year felt status quo for many in the marijuana industry but it remains one of the fastest growing industries in America. Over the next 5 years, the number of businesses in the sector is expected to rise nearly 20 percent per year, as reported by Inc.com in 2015.
Marijuana businesses have a lot to do this year to secure their place in the market as competition grows fast. If you are like us, chasing marijuana business goals, you’re not spending too much time making resolutions to cut back on your munchies.
Instead motivated business owners are making resolutions for growing their business and position in the cannabis industry. If you don’t have any resolutions for your business yet – you can start with the obvious here.
It’s time to get organized and plan for your 2016 goals.
Here are 6 tips to help you stick to your marijuana business resolutions:
- Write your resolutions down – If writing has never been your thing, take the time to draw your goals, you can ask someone to help you write them up later. It is important that we can picture and present our goals in an organized fashion.
Your resolutions, like your business plan, should be realistic and specific. Quantify your current state and your goals. Break the goals into a timeline, with milestones on a monthly and quarterly basis.
If you don’t have a business plan for your marijuana business or it’s buried in a binder somewhere under a stack of marijuana packaging catalogs , now is the time to get it up to date. Does the plan represent what is actually happening? Do you have workflows, policies and procedures to accomplish your mission? Do staff review the written policies regularly? Reflect on what has changed since you originally wrote or read the plan and adapt your plans for the New Year.
Display a summary of this year’s goals and projects somewhere you can look at it on a daily basis. Use technology like Adilas or Google Calendar & Drive to organize your goals, projects and progress. Look at it every day.
- Make your goals personal – Be aware of your emotions and senses, while at work, and relate them to your resolutions. This will help you to remember why these resolutions are important to you and your business development.
For example:
If your resolution is to delegate more, the next time you are feeling stunted, frustrated or overwhelmed at work physically look at your list of resolutions. Have you made your efforts to train someone to do things for you so that you can work on other projects?
OR
If your business resolution is to focus efforts on marketing, when you feel disappointment from a slow sales day or envy of a competitor’s marijuana brand, look at your list of resolutions and consider what you have done to accomplish your goals.
- Be present and methodical – It is true for the plants, people, and products – routine and consistency produce better results; repetition is essential. We must tend to our resolutions with repetition. Focus on the daily reps that will build to your goals. Create daily, weekly and monthly habits for yourself that will move you closer to your resolutions.
- Own it and know when to modify – Own your resolutions and resolve to get everyone on the same page. Let your staff, co-workers or business partners know your goals for the year.
Display quarterly or annual goals somewhere for team members to see and don’t be afraid to ask for help achieving them. Even better, discuss strategy with them and let the goals be their resolutions too, their input could be valuable. Don’t hesitate to change your reps if something (or someone) isn’t giving you the results you are looking for.
- Continue your education – Like with any industry, marijuana businesses and consumers are constantly evolving. Stay up to date on what is happening in the industry. Don’t waste too much time reinventing the wheel when there are likely people out there who have conquered similar challenges.
Be thankful to be able to easily speak to your consumers, your staff, your colleges and peers about marijuana openly. Collaborate and make efforts to constantly educate yourself and seek tools that could make your resolutions come easier. Continue to discuss your resolutions, all year long, so that others may offer you guidance, support or encouragement.
- Track your progress – you will hear this from us a lot. Good data and organized records are the only way to confirm you are successful. If you are “working reps” every day, keeping good records of constancies and variables and don’t see progress, you need to change something; Increase your efforts or try something new. Take the time to report on your progress weekly. If you can see success and prove continued development you will generate emotions of self-satisfaction and quick gratification, which will help keep you and your team motivated. As marijuana activists know, effecting change is an amazing feeling.
Adilas Elements of Time
- Reward yourself and those who help you make progress – Rewards should be a true reflection of the goal. Whether you are the business owner giving yourself a day off or rewarding your team with “thanks,” money or a free joint, make your rewards small, frequent and meaningful.
A 2012 Fortune magazine articled described best practices for rewarding employees and the employees appreciation for small rewards directly associated with their performance and behavior. The author explains how small and frequent rewards better incentivize progressive behavior as apposed to larger and predictable rewards and bonus’s which are often forgotten or disconnected from daily operations and performance.
Reward yourself for completing reps, meeting milestones regularly and celebrate big at the end of the year when your resolutions have been met.
Don’t forget to repeat, keep planning, keep doing, keep checking, keep rewarding. Keep going.
Happy New Year and Good Luck! Contact us if you need any help!
