The Road Ahead: 2022

2022: The Road Ahead

Your plan for a successful new year

The start of the new year is an excellent time to take stock of where your business is and where you want it to go. When thinking about your business strategy for the coming year, ask yourself three questions:

1. How is your painting business performing?
2. What goals do you want to set for the new year?
3. What can you do to meet those goals?

While those lofty questions are easier asked than answered, we've compiled a few tips for each to help you create a self-assessment and hone in on a personalized plan for the new year.

How is your painting business performing?

This seems like it should have a straight yes or no answer, but the truth is, there are many shades of gray when it comes to this question. You might find that there are areas where your business is performing great, but there are other areas where you'd like your business to perform better.

Here are some aspects of your business to consider. Take a moment and rate your business on a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent) for each:

• Financial - Overall Revenue
• Financial - Debts
• Financial - Employee Income & Benefits
• Financial - Ability to Expand, Purchase Equipment, etc.
• Finding New Clients
• Retaining Old Clients
• Customer Satisfaction & Reviews
• Efficiency/Time to Finish Jobs
• Employee Performance
• Employee Satisfaction & Retainment

What goals do you want to set for the new year?

Take a look at how you scored your business for each of the bullet points above. Is there any point where you scored over five? Fantastic! Is there any point where you scored below five? That's great too—you have just identified an area that needs improvement. When thinking about the new year, consider setting a goal to improve in the low-scoring areas, while maintaining performance in the high-scoring ones.

Now, separately from that list, close your eyes for a moment and dream. In your vision of a perfect painting business, what do you see? The sky's the limit! It doesn't matter if it's impossible, dream big. For example, do you envision a business where employees are treated as experts and paid above market rate? Or perhaps you see that your business has expanded to a national franchise? Once you have your big lofty dream in mind, open your eyes and think about what it means. While expanding your business to a national franchise or putting employees on salary might not be attainable in the near future, they will give you clues as to a direction you should explore. For example, you could set a goal to give employees a small raise or expand your business into a nearby market or neighborhood.

Based on your performance assessment and the dream exercise, write down your list of goals.

What can you do to meet those goals?

For each goal on your list, write down three actions you can take to achieve it. For example, if one goal is to improve customer satisfaction and reviews, your three actions might be to: provide employees with advanced training, change job processes to include additional check-ins with clients so that any mistakes can be addressed promptly, ask happy clients to write positive reviews online.

This list of actions is your business performance strategy for the new year. But don't stop just yet! Now you've got to put your strategy into an action plan. Whenever possible, schedule an action date for each action in your list. For example, if one of the actions is to provide more training for employees, write down a date by which you'd like employees to receive that training. If needed, break each action into smaller actions, such as research training programs, notify employees, enroll employees in training, facilitate training. For every action big or small, give it a date to give it a better chance of being done. As they say, "Tomorrow never comes," so writing down a list of actions with no date on them often means that they'll be pushed forward indefinitely. When all of your goals have an appropriate list of dated actions, pat yourself on the back. You've just created a business strategy and action plan for the new year. Impressive!

Here's to a successful new year for your painting business!