These twelve resolutions focus on shaping your leadership behavior and that all-so-powerful push to achieve significant gains.

With the right leadership focus, marginal performance can and will be a thing of the past.

1. Let go to lead more: Vice grips have never been a tool of leadership. Leaders that keep a death grip on decision making, people management, projects, procedures, budgets, and other operational elements, do more to stifle growth and performance than inspire it. If the people you lead can’t breathe — neither can your company. RESOLUTION: Let go of the controls so your employees can share the load. Let go of the controls in a manner that prepares others to take responsibility and grow. Doing so will allow you to look to the future and what it’s going to take to get there.


2. Start and finish that one big project: Every salon/spa owner has that one big project looming far too long. You know it needs to get done but something keeps holding you back. Maybe it’s fear, financial risk, the time it will take, or just uncertainty. RESOLUTION: Start by putting the completion date on your 2022 calendar. Then add dates for each element until you reach early January 2022 where you’ll enter “start.” Get it done.


3. Do the 30-day “nothing but team goal” challenge: Owners are notorious for setting individual goals for employees. But what if the total of all those individual goals comes up short of what your company needs or is capable of doing? The bigger issue is the impact on culture when everyone on the team is playing for their own goal — not the team goal. The team goal is about everyone playing together to win. Individual goals are personal records. RESOLUTION: This March 2022, make everything about achieving the overall team goal. No talk, tracking, reports, stats, or anything about individual goals. Your mission is to lead and inspire your team to victory. Daily huddles, scoreboards, updates, and information flow are your leadership tools. Use them.


4. Fix that one big thing that’s hurting your company’s culture: Come on, you know exactly what or who it is. It’s that nagging thing that just doesn’t go away. You know it’s in the way and needs to be fixed or eliminated. RESOLUTION: If you know and acknowledge that something or someone is a problem, and do nothing, it will not fix itself and it will get worse. RESOLUTION: If it’s building better systems and accountability, do it. If it means that you must clarify expectations far better than you usually do, do it. If it means having that fierce conversation with that problem employee, do it. And if you know that problem employee should have been fired long ago, do it now.


5. 100% retail recommendations for two weeks straight: Retail commissions don’t drive retail sales — recommendations do. Chances are that the majority of clients checking out aren’t receiving retail recommendations. That means money and opportunity are walking out the door all day, every day. So, let’s play a game that will show your company’s true untapped retail potential. You can’t sell what you don’t recommend. RESOLUTION: Selling is simply a numbers game. Every client receives a verbal and written retail recommendation. 100%. No excuses. Front desk/guest services close the retail sale. The more clients that are asked to buy what was professionally recommended, the higher your retail sales.

6. By the end of 2022, turn your worst critical number into one you’re proud of: You know the critical number I’m talking about. It’s the one you hate to look at because it never improves. Productivity rate, client retention rate, pre-book rate, frequency of visit, service payroll percentage, net profit, cash reserve. RESOLUTION: Pick your most frustrating critical number and make improving it a team effort. To do so, you’ll need to build better systems, training on those systems, scoreboard tracking, and discipline. They’re called critical numbers for a reason. It’s time to get seriously critical.


7. Identify and eliminate your biggest personal timewaster: Humans are creatures of habit and some of those habits are serious timewasters. The proof is simple. When someone says, “I don’t have time to do that,” it really means he or she won’t make time. And it’s always interesting how that someone can find time to waste time on something totally inconsequential. RESOLUTION: Write down your biggest personal timewaster on a dozen post-It notes. Now, put those post-It notes in places where you can’t miss them. The goal is to focus and work on higher-priority tasks that will grow your company. Got it?


8. Start every morning by writing down one reason you love about being a business owner: You can’t be a business owner and not experience frustration from setbacks, tight cash flow, employee challenges, and pretty much anything to do with business. Sometimes that frustration takes you to the edge. You start to question why you continue to do this. RESOLUTION: This resolution is about writing your personal entrepreneurial story one day at a time. At the end of 2022, you’ll have 365 reasons why you love being a business owner. When frustration starts to get the best of you, take your daily love notes for your business and read them as reminders that loving someone, or something takes work.


9. Spend one hour each day hanging out in the break room: I recommended this to a coaching client who was experiencing some culture challenges. His immediate response was, “You mean for a full 60 minutes?” When I asked what his concern was, he replied, “They’re going to ask me for raises and stuff.” Clearly, his reluctance to engage with employees was part of the culture problem. RESOLUTION: If you want to know what’s going in your salon/spa, hang out in the break room. Be present. Smile. No smartphone or anything to prevent eye contact with employees. Just hang out. Ask them how it’s going. It won’t take long for the information flood gates to open. When one or more share their concerns, let them know you’ll check into it. Be sure to follow up and share explanations and possible solutions. It’s so vital to a company’s cultural vitality to share conversations with the leader. It builds trust.


10. Put your company on a financial diet and fitness program: Since starting a diet and fitness program is the most common New Year’s resolution, why not make the same resolution for your company’s health and wellbeing. RESOLUTION: Cash-flow plans, budgets, and financial reports are the tools to monitor and influence the financial health of your company. Entrepreneurial owners and fiscal accountability are typically a love/hate relationship. The fact is, the more thoroughly owners use these tools, the more love, pride, and appreciation they have for their companies. Make 2022 the year your company gets financially healthy and fit. Want help? Click here to learn how Strategies Coaching can get you there.


11. The “maintain your perspective” factor: This one is simple. Keeping your perspective on where you and your business are at … combined with realistic expectations … is the best strategy to maintaining your passion as a leader and business owner. RESOLUTION: Perspective allows you to see problems and solutions more clearly. Perspective makes you more strategic in your decision-making. Perspective keeps your passion properly fueled and glowing just right. It’s when your perspective becomes distorted, through denial and avoidance of real issues, that it wrecks your passion.


12. Don’t become an autopilot leader: It doesn’t work. In business, there’s no such thing as “set it and forget it.” Employees need leadership. Employees need feedback, encouragement, coaching, compassion, and, when necessary, discipline. Employees need performance reviews. Employees need to be heard. Employees want to be treated fairly. Employees desire to work in a financially secure business … not one that exists in a perpetual cash crisis RESOLUTION: Do the work. Engage. This IS the work of leadership. They don’t teach this stuff in cosmetology school. For what it’s worth, they don’t teach this stuff in medical or law school either.