Make Your Business Even Better in 2021

What are your weaknesses? It's the dreaded question we might be used to hearing at job interviews, but it can be very insightful. Being able to take a realistic look at your business, branding, and skill sets may seem daunting but you'll be better for it in the end. The good news is that once you identify those weaknesses you can get to work fixing them!

First, start by creating a list of your strengths. These can be skills, business assets, financial choices, anything you see as a strength for you and your business. Doing this will help you start to organize and assess your everything and give you an idea of where you don’t need to focus for this exercise. Plus, it feels good to look at a list of everything you’re great at! Next, start on the list of weaknesses. List skills that you struggle with or skills you hope to develop someday. List things you don’t like about your business – maybe it’s the way you handle billing or your social media accounts. You can show your list to a trusted friend or spouse to get honest feedback from an outside perspective if you like.

Rank your weaker list items based on which are more important to you or more vital that you address in order to run your business better. Number them starting with 1 being the most important. Finally, work out a plan to get started. What resources do you need and are there costs associated with it? Are there books that could help you? Online courses? A friend who can spend an afternoon helping you learn? Start making plans for the first few skills and set goal dates for when you’d like to have tackled them. This isn’t a date you’ll master the skill by. Just the date you hope to have moved from beginner to intermediate. Once you get started it won’t seem so daunting. And before you know it, you’ll have new skills and a leg-up in your business.

Do you have any big plans for this year?