It’s that time again! Time to spring clean your hustle for the year ahead. Preparing your business for a new year with a fresh, revitalised, clean business that has structure, clarity and vision. What an amazing start to a year!

And, it gets the creative and productive juices flowing – no blockers, negativity, or barriers. All you can see is your goal straight ahead of you, and the clear path to get you there.

Spring cleaning your hustle is a time to review your past business year, take stock of the good, the bad and the ugly, and then clean out the bad to make room for the new and improved. And, the end of one year and moving into the next is the perfect time to do it.

Plus, it’s an amazing way to clear your mind and get back on track with your mindset.

Things are winding down and we are shifting gears into the party season. This brings with it a mental shift, where we see an end in sight, we are looking ahead to holidays, unwinding, rebalancing, and then starting the new year. There’s a cathartic sense of shedding the old, bringing in the new, and a wonderful feeling of starting over. A spring clean, of both our minds and our business, is important as it allows us to get rid of anything we don’t want to take with us into the new year.

We get to shake off old habits, routines, diets, feelings, emotions, and anything dragging us down mentally and physically. Then, as the new year rolls in, we create new habits, new routines, we start new activities, feel a renewed energy to exercise and bring up our fitness levels, and create new goals. It’s incredible how, as a new year approaches, we get a strong desire to mix things up in our lifestyle and health.

Whenever a new year comes in, I love taking time out to prepare my goals for the year ahead, align my vision, and build my framework to get me there. Normally, I’m all about me me me and changing up my lifestyle. But, this year I have to think about my baby business too.

Setting life goals as well as business goals is an important exercise, and involves reviewing the past year and seeing how to improve and build upon the actions of this year.

LET’S START WITH A VISION EXERCISE

Before we get into the 11 ways to spring clean your hustle, let’s start with an exercise that focusses on your business’ goals, vision, and how to review your past year. So, grab out a pen and paper!

Look back at the past year…

NUMBER 1. What goals did you set out to achieve by the end of this year? Are you on track to achieving them?

If not, what do you need to do to hit your goals? There’s still time!

NUMBER 2. Has there been a change, shift or refocus in your branding over the past year? Branding includes your voice, vibe and visuals (check out the Social Media Startup Guide for more on brand building.) It’s important to identify your current brand position so take a moment to reflect on your brand personality, style, and visually, how you are showing up online.

NUMBER 3. What is your 2020 big picture vision for your business? Aka, what you are aiming to achieve in the coming year. These aren’t your bite size goals, think big picture. Bring out your inner visionary.

This forecasting helps train your mind to think ahead and formulate a pathway to get you there. A business mindset is important to have as an early stage business owner. It requires training and constant strengthening.

 NUMBER 4. Let’s look at your social media activity over 2019…

Look back at your social media goals. Are you on track to achieve them? Remember, pivot, shift and change things up if you need to. There is still time to achieve those goals.

TIP: work to 90-day strategy cycles. They are bite-sized, structured, easier to digest, and easier to achieve.

One important note here is that while it is important for business growth to have goals and objectives, progress is progress. Keep moving forward, stay motivated, be accountable, and keep yourself in check.

Next, let’s do some analytics by reviewing your social media activity. This is something you would ideally do every 90 days as part of your strategy cycle. Check your number of follower count and how much you increased by, engagement rates, and the number of leads you had.

What platforms have you enjoyed spending time on, and why?

What platforms have you seen the most engagement on? Why is that the case?

Analysing, or reviewing, your past behaviours, activities and looking at the stats, will prepare you for the coming year.

NUMBER 5. What marketing do you want to do in 2020? Perhaps you want to increase your online presence by doing more video, start a podcast, introduce online courses. Write it down!

Spend time doing this exercise yearly, and form a habit around this. It will set you on a path to business success.

As the end of the year draws close, this is the perfect time to spring clean your hustle. I have put together a free guide on the 11 ways to spring clean your business, with worksheets and a bonus exercise. Grab it below. It includes an exercise which gets you to step back and reflect on your business as a whole, and define your product and service suite for the coming year. The exercise allows you to give your business a once-over and evaluate areas of strength and areas of improvement. It can be pretty sobering, or it can be darn thrilling, but being realistic about your current state will get you in a stronger position for 2020.

Here are 11 ways to spring clean your hustle and get you ready for the next year.

1. Review your business objectives – see what’s worked, not worked, what you achieved, and your progress.

2. Update your website – this is one of those ‘I’ll leave it till later’ tasks for a lot of people. But, with the end of the year coming, now is the perfect time to identify what you can DIY and what you need an expert to do. Action, action, action!

3. Review your business plan and do a refresh – focus on a few things here including competitor and client intelligence. Remember, your business plan is a flexible document.

4. Review your current strategies and create new ones – prepare for the year ahead by reviewing your current strategy and preparing for the next 90 day strategy. The word ‘strategy’ makes it sound a lot more difficult than it needs to be. Think of ‘plan’, ‘framework’, ‘roadmap’.

5. Clean out your email inbox – it’s time… Just get it over and done with. Rip it off like a bandaid. Clean out your inbox, categorise, remove and action items, as needed. Start the new year fresh.

6. Get cyber hygienic – review your online presence and check how secure you are – check your passwords, create new, stronger ones and get a password manager.

 7. Get your budget sorted – open an Excel spreadsheet and start tracking your budget. This includes your expenses over the past year, and upcoming, known expenses. Have a ‘dream list’ where you identify what you would like to invest in once you have the capital for it.

8. Clean up your online presence – this is where you dump what you don’t want online anymore. This includes unsubscribing or unfollowing accounts. And, it’s important to track your online presence. Keep a record of where you are online including your email accounts, social media accounts, blogs, and any online tools. You should definitely track any paid online tools you pay for monthly.

9. Create habits for 2020 – whether it’s introducing daily, weekly, or monthly habits, write out your ‘productivity list’, aka what you want to introduce into your routine to become more productive and focussed for the coming year. This could include having Sunday Sessions, like I do, where I plan out my content for the week. Or, creating checklists keeping you on track, perhaps with Trello or another online tool.

10. Automate – look back over the past year and identify areas that have been labour intensive or manual-based, that you could automate in the coming year. This could include introducing email automations, online forms, or payment systems.

11. Testimonials and feedback – pull together your testimonials and feedback from the past year and store them for use in 2020 promotional materials such as social media and lead pages.

Spring cleaning your hustle involves reviewing your past year, getting rid of what wasn’t working in your business, retaining what did work, and setting up a new, fresh, streamlined pathway for your business that has clarity, focus and direction. You will start the year with a renewed energy and vibe that will motivate you to take action and charge ahead, doing whatever you need to to achieve your goals.

 Spring cleaning your hustle also incorporates re-strengthening your business mindset. Shedding doubts, hesitations, fears and anything that has held you back and prevented you from taking action.

Always start a new year with motivation, determination, focus, and a strong sense of mind.

Remember why you are here, why you started your business. Close your eyes and remember back to when you were dreaming about starting a business and the lifestyle you hoped to have one day. Now is that time.

Remember your purpose. You are here to build a profitable business, serve your clients and solve their struggles, and create a lifestyle of your dreams. A flexible lifestyle on your terms.

These days are yours.

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DOWNLOAD: 11 Ways to Spring Clean Your Hustle. This guide includes action worksheets and a BONUS products & services review, keeping you on track and accountable.

Let’s grow your hustle!

Hi, I’m Simran, and I’m here to help savvy new coaches and service-based business owners start and grow a profitable business and land clients with intentional action and strategy.

And, I am here to help you catapult your online visibility with confidence and authority, while being authentically you.

If you want to work with me, find out more about my coaching services.

simran@simranksingh.co