The 5 New Year’s Resolutions Every Challenger Brand Should Make

It’s January 6 and odds are, you’ve made a number of New Year’s resolutions you hope to make good on sometime in 2015. But that’s personal. What about your professional promises? Has your company made any resolutions it hopes to keep in the coming 12 months?

Like each of us, every company should take the fresh new start that January represents to recommit to living and being who it is they want to be. Challenger brand companies don’t have the luxury of not performing at their best. You have to focus, sacrifice and commit to doing everything you can to streamline your company and everyone in it. Commit to making this your best year ever starting with these five resolutions:

LOSE WEIGHT

How heavy is your company? Put another way, what’s weighing you down and keeping you from being as happy, healthy and productive as you could be? It could be a toxic client that’s making you and your team miserable, not paying you enough and dictating one unreasonable demand after another. It could be one or more employees who aren’t the right fit, or don’t buy into the culture you’re building. It might even be something as mundane and obvious as shelves, drawers and storage that’s overflowing and cluttering up your workspace. What are you hanging on to that you need to let go? Like genuine weight loss, lightening the load even a little bit can make a huge difference in how you feel.

WORK OUT

You’ve heard all the clichés. Get out of your comfort zone. Push yourself. Do something different. How easy it is to find ourselves stuck in a rut when we’re doing the same things over and over and over again. We all have our recipes for individual and corporate success. But it’s time to push for something more. This year, commit to doing something different. Lift something heavy. Implement new exercises to make your employees stronger, stimulate their thinking and pump them up. A number of years ago, New York Agency Droga 5 concepted the Tap Project, a brilliant idea to have New York City restaurant patrons pay $1 for a glass of tap water on a given day with the proceeds going to support Unicef. Since 2007, the Tap Project has raised nearly $5 million and provided clean drinking water to hundreds of millions of people in 11 countries. All from a simple idea. What is your Tap Project?

EAT BETTER

From a corporate perspective, what do you eat? What information do you consume on a regular basis? Is it healthy? Helpful? Encouraging? To operate at your best, you and your employees need a steady diet of valuable learning and non-toxic communication. Clearly, the world can be a negative place, but when you choose to fill your mind with smart, empowering messages, good things follow. Given the choice, what healthier communication channels can you choose for yourself and your employees?

STOP SMOKING

How much time do you waste every year being annoyed, worked up, angry and put out with your staff, your clients, your friends, or yourself? Now think about just how unproductive that negative energy is and how toxic it is to both your physical health and that of your personal and professional relationships. Let it go. Pick up a copy of David Emerald’s transformational book, The Power of TED: The Empowerment Dynamic and start living as the Creator of the company, the culture and the life you really want. Say goodbye to viewing life through the lens of a victim and don’t look back.

COMMIT TO YOUR GOALS

Research has proven people who document their goals in writing have a far greater chance of reaching them. But writing them down is only the first step. The crucial step is the second one because most people never even get to it. Once you know what your goals are, you have to commit yourself to reaching them. Otherwise, your goals are just a charade and why bother? Whether you write your goals out in detail, track them using special software, or put a 2×2 priority calendar on the wall, commit yourself to constantly move forward, be disciplined, do the hard work and finish the drill. If it helps to share your goals with your employees so they can hold you accountable, do it. If you’re new to this, you don’t need 27 goals. Start with a few. But get them done.