10 Business Owners Share Their New Year’s Resolutions for 2020

With the year coming to a close, Americans all over are feeling the annual urge to make New Year’s resolutions. But you shouldn’t just be thinking “new year, new me.” If you’re an entrepreneur, you should have a business New Year’s resolution as well as a personal resolution. Seek Capital spoke to several successful entrepreneurs about their New Year’s business resolutions. They offered a mix of general, holistic business resolutions with specific, technical solutions they want to introduce in the coming year. Read on to find out what 10 business owners say their New Year’s resolutions are for them and their companies in 2020.

1. Building a Solid Foundation

“Our New Year’s Resolution is to continue building a solid foundation, one brick at a time,” said Tom Matun, president of Powder Mix Direct. “Unlike many, we prefer consistent singles over short-lived viral home runs. In our opinion, it’s the key to establishing a long-term brand.”

2. Expanding the Company

“As a small business owner, my New Year’s resolution is to grow and expand our company as much as possible in 2020. We plan on devoting even more time and resources to social media, as that’s one area where we’ve had a lot of success with,” said Andrew Schrage, CEO of Money Crashers. “We feel we have the right people on board to support this expansion, and we’re excited about the possibilities.”

3. Spending More Time With the Team

“My New Year’s resolution is to spend an hour less at my desk each day. As CEO of a fast-growing company, it’s easy for me to feel overwhelmed and think that the only answer is to lock my door and hide behind my laptop at my desk, furiously answering emails and looking at spreadsheets,” said Abhi Lokesh, CEO and co-founder of Fracture, a home decor brand. “However, I think a better approach is to actually spend more time being with the rest of the team, walking through the production floor, taking a walk outside, or just sitting at a different desk in the office to get a different perspective.”

4. Increasing Employee Happiness

“My main goal for 2020 is to raise overall employee happiness in the workplace. I have noticed my workers are much more motivated and eager to work and learn if they are taken care of, happy, and healthy,” said Jacob Dayan, CEO and co-founder of Finance Pal and Community Tax . “Happy employees also means higher retention rates and lower turnover rates, greater productivity, and an overall better working environment for everybody. I plan on raising employee satisfaction in 2020 by offering more benefits, having more team outings and happy hours, offering more work from home options and reducing micromanagement. ”

5. New Ways of Tackling Projects

“As a small business owner, our resolution is to disentangle all projects from being handled by the same few top-level team members, and instead have a process in place for a specialist to handle the various project components,” said Jon Knight, chief security officer at Fortified Estate. “In this way, managers aren’t overwhelmed with too many smaller tasks, and clients are happier because they have people who are better on top of their security project and specific engineering questions.”

6. More Focus on Clients’ Business Challenges

“Beginning a new year and new decade, we resolve to spend even more time and effort to help solve our client’s business challenges. We are passionate about retail. You will regularly find our people walking into new stores at a nearby mall or browsing websites to find new products,” said Carlos Castelán, managing director of The Navio Group . “Keeping a pulse on the market, sharing what we see with clients — who are focused on becoming more successful — can help us spark new ideas or ways to drive their business forward while bringing success to our own firm.”

7. Automating Processes

“We have a plan to increase our workforce by 30 percent and automate the onboarding process in 2020. Until now, human resources has been managing hiring operations manually. It becomes extremely time-consuming and is not secure, as well,” said Jessica Chase, sales and marketing manager at Premier Title Loans. “Instead of increasing HR representatives, we prefer buying onboarding software for a smooth transition for new hires, addressing their needs efficiently and for keeping sensitive data protected.”

8. Enabling Mobile Accessibility

“The time has gone when customers lean toward their desktop PC to make look into online dealings. For our online e-commerce business, we are aiming to introduce our mobile app with the users, which helps them to find us anywhere from their mobile,” said Jacob Seiter, founder of MyBestWallets. “The app will not only help the users to find us on their mobile phones but also will be the source of our constant marketing effort through its notifications and pop-ups. We will be providing some exclusive deals to our early users of the app.”

9. Increasing Responsiveness of Company Website

“For any business, customer relationship management is the key to attain and win customer’s confidence and loyalty. To achieve this, our website should be highly responsive and should make itself available for responding to the queries of customers, 24 hours a day,” said Aqsa Tabassam, senior growth marketer at Brandnic. “In 2020, we are looking for enabling AI-supported chatbots for our company’s websites. This will help customers to find their product details, hosting information, and price estimation more conveniently.”

10. Greater Productivity Through Less Work

“My New Year’s resolution for 2020 is to spend less time working. I think as a business owner it’s easy to get into the habit of working constantly. Let’s face it, there is always something that we feel like we should be doing for our businesses, right?” said Jessica Tappana, owner of Aspire Counseling and Simplified SEO Consulting. “But as a mental health professional, I know the risk of burnout is real and that I’ll actually be more productive if I take a break sometimes. So, I’ve been working on a new schedule that would give me more clear boundaries between the time I am working versus off work and I want to be more protective of that dedicated time away from my businesses in the new year.”

The Bottom Line

Business New Year’s resolutions can vary widely, but most of the best ones have a shared trait. Every good New Year’s resolution for businesses are based on advancing the company as a whole, rather than the individual owner. Whether it is the business owner wanting to improve his or her own behavior or employing state-of-the-art technology, the best business resolutions aim to better the entire organization.