The start of a new year can be a time to take stock and reflect on where your business has come from and where you want it to go.
It can be a time of renewal and change; a time to work on your business, not just in it.
With this in mind, SmartCompany asked six entrepreneurs to tell us one thing they plan to change about their business in 2016.
Here’s what they said.
Sam Bashiry, co-founder of Broadband Solutions: Work-life balance
“In 2016 I’d like to focus on creating a better ‘work-life balance’.”
“As an entrepreneur and business owner, there is a certain pressure to always be ‘on’ and always be available, which can easily become overwhelming.
“As an ambitious person, I tend to focus the majority of my time and attention toward furthering the success of my business but the result of that is often time-consuming, quickly absorbing my energy and leaving little time for the ‘life’ side of the balance.
“As technology grows it has started to blur the line between work and life because everything is readily accessible at the touch of a button; we are expected to be responsive at all hours and this easily creates an unstructured and unbalanced lifestyle.
“Whilst the idea of ‘work-life’ balance can seem unattainable for an entrepreneur, in 2016, I’m going to focus on making it a reality by creating more structure day-to-day, learning to be more disciplined with my time and ensuring I have time for myself to stay healthy and enjoy life with less distractions.”
Ashleigh McInnes, founder and director of Papermill Media: Delegating
“I’ve had an epiphany in 2015 that I can no longer do it all and still have a life outside of my work endeavours, which is all consuming!”
“In 2016 I plan to focus on giving more responsibility to others and hiring some additional key senior team members that can take some of the day-to-day pressure off myself, so that I can get back to focusing on the parts of my business that I love the most.
“It’s been a hard truth pill to swallow and I’ve had to learn the hard way but I’m ready to take the plunge in 2016 and take a step back.”
Paul Chan, founder of Pureprofile: Story telling
“While the main focus for me has always been to truly invest in our talent and culture and I don’t see that changing in the future, what will change is how much time we spend on communicating our story to stakeholders, including potential employees.”
“In order to ensure we have the right talent to deliver on a very large and exciting vision, we need to articulate it both internally and externally and use it as a tool to attract candidates who want to come with us on this journey.
“I’d like 2016 to be the year I crack telling the story of where Pureprofile is going and generate excitement about the opportunities it creates.”
Taryn Williams, founder of Wink Models: Team building
“The one change I am focused on for 2016 is really focusing on developing my team to allow me to oversee the business and work on new projects.”
“I’ll be honest, I’ve always found it hard to delegate so this is a big change for me!
“There are some great opportunities to innovate the [modelling] industry and I am excited to be launching a new platform that I believe will disrupt the way clients and talent connect.
“I am fostering my team by investing in formal training programs as well as ensuring a really clear system of reporting is in place, along with all the procedures and processes to allow them to thrive. I’m really excited for the new year and putting these changes in place!”
Stephen Jones, co-founder of House of Home: Empowerment
“In 2015, my key word and hence focus was “doing”; anything that needed to get done simply got done.”
“In 2016, my key words are ‘empowerment and accountability’.
“We have an incredible team in here at House of Home, all of whom want to succeed both personally and professionally. Success is an outcome of focused hard work, so if we can move from an environment of simply ‘doing’ to one in which people are empowered to create their own journeys, all of our people, our customers and our business will share in this success.”
Alison Michalk, founder of Quiip: Sharing what we’ve learnt
“The one thing we’ll change, or do more of in 2016, is share our learnings around operating our company as a community, specifically a distributed team.”
“As an entrepreneur I believe distributed teams are fast becoming the future of work and we’re proud to share our learnings as a company that’s built a strong culture and company without a central office. We’re seeing the shift to ‘companies as communities’ and as an online community management company, we certainly understand how this approach can benefit organisations.
“We’re also really invested in being a great place to work, which isn’t about ping pong tables (impossible in our case!), but rather working out people’s personal and professional goals and helping them achieve them through an integrated approach to home and work.
“This approach has helped people complete studies, raise kids, participate in sports, travel and work on side projects, all whist participating in the community and company that we’ve built.”
Editor
Eloise is an experienced business journalist and editor, who has held senior editorial roles at SmartCompany since 2014. Prior to joining SmartCompany, Eloise was news editor at Books+Publishing, the trade press for the Australian book industry. Eloise has degrees in media and communications, marketing and business management, and political science. You can follow her on LinkedIn, and Twitter at @ellykeating.
