Resolutions In Focus

Scour the Internet this time of year and you’ll find post after post offering guidance on New Year’s resolutions for marketers and entrepreneurs. The typical ideas usually fall into the realms of budgeting, customer relations, branding, strategies and SEO and social media. Some of these suggestions can get pretty specific about setting goals. I’d like to be a little more vague this year.

I’d like to suggest that your number one resolution for this year should be to get focused. Focus on what you do best and delegate the rest. This means investing all of your time in the things that you can do better than anyone else. Are you the founder of a company with an innovative product? Perhaps your time should be spent almost entirely on product development. Does your strength lie in crunching numbers? You should be focused on budgeting and fiscal planning. Or maybe you’re a top notch people person? You should be leading the sales force or out in the field rubbing elbows with consumers. Whatever the case may be, the thing you do best is the thing you should focus on doing.

Focus also means to stop stretching yourself thin with tasks that someone else could do better. Delegating the tasks that are not your specialty will help you get everything done more efficiently and more effectively. This could mean giving your administrative staff more responsibilities or hiring a personal assistant if your are self-employed. It might also mean hiring more specialists for your staff and farming out more work to independent contractors or partnering with specialty firms.

Being focused will result in being more efficient and, in turn, more productive. More productivity always helps the bottom line.