“Resolution number one: Obviously will lose twenty pounds. Number two: Always put last night’s panties in the laundry basket. Equally important, will find sensible boyfriend to go out with and not continue to form romantic attachments to any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobic’s, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts. And especially will not fantasize about a particular person who embodies all these things”

― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

It’s the perfect time to look at your life, identify areas you can improve, and make a plan. It’s the perfect time to make resolutions for change. But when most people think of a New Year’s resolution, like Bridget Jones, they think of things like exercise or relationships, which are great, but do they help you in your business? The answer is YES. As a small business owner, your personal and business growth goes hand-in-hand, so …

I asked five business owners what resolutions they committed to in the past that changed their life and business. And here are their responses.

Susana Fanticoba is a business strategist, marketing content writer, and owner of Clear Path Strategy.

Susana’s new year resolution was to take better control of her calendar.

Susana’s Resolution in Her Own Words

With business in a typical flux of busyness/slowness throughout the year, I resolved to take better control of my calendar and have a plan to make use of the slower months. August is always slow, so why act surprised? I made Mondays and Fridays my “flex” days – so I could focus on a project or care for family members or get my administrative work all caught up. For my slow periods, I kept a list of what I wanted to learn or read; or even reorganized my office and files. This past August, I drew from my list and accomplished a large chunk of internal work, including the topics I wanted to learn. This changed my business by supercharging my productivity and my mental outlook. Instead of focusing on slow business, I looked forward to all I conquered during that “open” time.

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Bertha Garcia Robinson is a global business coach, consultant, and founder of Star One Professional Services.

Bertha helps business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs turn potential into performance by closing the gap between goal setting and goal achievement. She is also the President of the New Jersey Association of Women Business Owners.

Bertha likes the idea of commitment to self over a New Year’s Resolution, so Bertha’s new year commitment was time-blocking all her activities.

Bertha’s Commitment in Her Own Words

At the beginning of 2022, I committed to consistently time-block all my activities. I use a paper planner to write out all my week’s activities, identifying each day’s top 3 goals/priorities and the daily tasks that must be done. These activities are sorted into breakout, strategic, and buffer time. To help stay consistent, I fill in my calendar at the beginning of the week and review the calendar daily to keep on task. Each block is assigned a specific color for a visual aid to be written in.

The time blocks help me prioritize my daily tasks and align them with the goals I planned for the quarter. I write out the breakout time first since that is my personal time to focus on me, my family, my friends, and all those things that matter most. This time block is mostly about people dear to me. The second time block is about revenue-generating tasks, the strategic time block. This is all about prospecting, networking, client meetings, etc. And lastly, the buffer time block is for all that stuff that needs to get done and if not careful, can easily turn into a time waster. Activities like checking email, responding on social media, making phone calls, and some emergency or unplanned meetings fall into buffer time.

The commitment to time blocking makes me more effective and efficient. It’s no longer only a commitment – it’s a practice.

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Michelle Peralta is an event planner with a wild imagination and unfailing good mood and co-founder of Josie Michelle Events.

Michelle’s new year resolution was to be thankful daily.

Michelle’s Resolution in Her Own Words

One new year’s resolution I’ve stuck to is starting each day thinking about two or three specific moments I’m grateful for from the day before. This practice has allowed me to appreciate things that might easily be forgotten, like a funny moment with a colleague, a perfect cup of coffee, or experiencing a pleasant breeze while running an errand. Starting the day this way has multiple benefits in my personal and business life.

Being mindful of all the small yet wonderful moments I experience in a day helps me feel positive about the day ahead and has helped me become more optimistic. As a result, I feel more energized and enthusiastic as I approach my work. It also gives me perspective and makes business challenges seem a little less difficult or overwhelming. Since I’m in the business of celebrating life and spreading joy, I’m committed to reflecting good vibes only!

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Tanesha Halstead is a CRM Automation Consultant & Keap Certified Partner for Small Business Owners and owner of Virtually Centered Solutions.

Tanesha specializes in helping entrepreneurs save time by automating repetitive tasks like lead capture and follow-up so they can spend time with family and friends, on their health, or things that matter the most. Through educational content and consulting services, she teaches her audience how business automation creates consistent people-centric connections, less overwhelm in day-to-day operations, and scalable business growth.

Tanesha’s new year resolution was to make healthy happen.

Tanesha’s Resolution in Her Own Words

I have a confession. I am a serial goal-er. It’s not just me either—I’ve seen this repeatedly with the women entrepreneurs I work with. We set goals, write them down (sometimes on our bathroom mirrors), and then we get so busy with life that we don’t have time to follow up on them.

For 2022, I set out to commit to “Making Healthy Happen,” where I would work out 3-4 times a week and make better choices with my nutrition. It has changed my life! Not only have I felt better about my body, but my mindset has changed. This showed me that if I can be consistent with this one thing, I could build consistency around other habits in my business, like my work and daily tasks. With that, I bet on myself to launch our Youtube channel, where we produced weekly content and launched an Introduction to Business Automation course for small business owners!

There is no quick fix to a healthy lifestyle or business. It takes work, consistency, and discipline. What I learned from my goal and how I will apply this moving forward is that it’s all about creating habits that support our goals. All it takes is being willed to commit to something small and actionable. It’s about the journey, not the destination!

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Kia Harris is a high-energy, patient, inclusive, and authentic publisher and owner of KH Publishing.

Kia’s approach allows her to guide novice authors in bringing their best books to the market. Her perseverance drives her commitment to creativity and authenticity in amplifying the stories of brown and black authors.

Kia prefers the idea of goals over resolutions, so Kia set a goal to eliminate distractions, including social media. Yeap, you read it right. Read on!  

Kia’s No Distraction Goal in Her Own Words

My first goal was to identify and eliminate any distractions and activities that were not effectively contributing to the success of my business. What I found to be my number one distraction and least likely opportunity to secure new clients, yet, it was where I was spending 85% of my time and resources, was social media. I think social media is a great opportunity to network and share information. However, I found that it took time away from me to focus on my day-to-day business operations and began trickling into my family time. 

I decided to break away from social media for what I thought would be a couple of months, but it has turned out to be much longer than that. The result? I’ve been uber-focused in my business, gaining new clients and even landing a historic opportunity to become Editorial Director for Frederick Douglass Books, an imprint of Forefront Books, focusing on high-net-worth brown and black authors with significant, important, impactful, historical, and change leading stories, with my first book being the republishing of Frederick Douglass’ narrative. I’ve also been able to be more present and focused on spending meaningful time with my family. 

Will I ever go back to social media? Most likely, yes. However, it will be much better managed on my terms and time. 

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Now that you have read these resolutions, consider adapting either of them into your 2023 plans to help you thrive. But don’t forget that a resolution (a goal, or a commitment) without an action plan is just writing on paper. Set your goal, break it down into smaller-actionable steps, define the milestones, set deadlines, then execute. Here’s to your success in 2023.