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About Coast river business journal. (Astoria, OR) 2006-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 2021)
BUSINESS COMMENT & NEWS Coast River Business Journal January 2021 • 15 Goal setting Six goals your business can set in 2021 By Jessica Newhall Clatsop Community College Small Business Development Center Small businesses are often the product of the powerful combination of entrepreneurial vision and passion. While these can be helpful to pen- etrate markets and fuel the tenacity required to overcome challenges, a business owner can sig- nificantly improve their chances of success by supporting vision and passion with a solid, well- thought-out plan to actively guide decision mak- ing. To say that the pandemic has disrupted most small business owners’ ability to plan would be an understatement. Yet, as understanding of the virus grows, vac- cinations commence and consumer habits sta- bilize, the start of 2021 offers business owners a new opportunity to dip their toes into the planning waters once again. Here are six suggestions of business goals you can set this year: Understand what drives your profitability. If you have not looked at your financials lately, the start of the year is an incredibly powerful time to do so as it can help guide budgeting and decision mak- ing for the coming year and help avoid emotional or reactive decisions that can have a negative impact on performance. One key indicator that business owners can look for in year-end financials is profit- ability (especially critical for Sole Props and LLCs as this often dictates your take-home earnings). Do you understand what key factors are positively or negatively impacting profitability (revenue, cost of goods, expenses)? How has profitability changed from 2019 to 2020 and why? How does your profit- ability compare to others in your industry? (Unsure of your industry averages? The SBDC can help.) Reduce ongoing business expenses. Given the economic climate, you are likely operating pretty lean already but something to consider: if a busi- ness were able to just trim $27 per day from the expense line, that would be the equivalent of almost $10,000 per year. For a business with annual prof- its of $50,000, an additional $10,000 to the bottom line would result in a 20% increase! So, look at your financials for 2020 and think about where you might be able to trim without sacrificing product or service quality or creating risk. Increase revenue. There are several ways that businesses can increase top-line revenue. This is a wonderful time to rekindle that passion and think about what existing customers might buy more of, whether they could support a price increase for existing offerings or what kind of fresh offering might attract new customers. Schedule some time for brainstorming — and if you have a team, this is a great time to engage them as well! Fix a broken customer-service process. All businesses have those nagging little snags in their Clatsop home supply ends year at historic low Jessica Newhall customer experience that come up from time to time (or even worse, all the time). Unfortunately, it is easy to get so busy that these never get addressed and small blunders in customer service can turn into big problems. If there is something that has come up consistently in customer comments or feedback from your employees, this is a great time to com- mit to fixing it. Grow your digital presence. The pandemic has opened new avenues of growth for companies who have leveraged the power of digital to drive engage- ment, reach new customers and increase sales. If your business needs an enhanced online presence, pick one channel (but just one to start), such as your website or a specific social media platform, this is a great time to set that goal and get moving {span}— {/span} and the great part about digital marketing is that progress is easily measured with analytics! Improve your financial health. The bottom line is, not monitoring how money is flowing through your company in a timely and accurate manner can be crippling to business success and often leads to failure. If goals one through three above were unat- tainable due to a lack of accurate financials, now is the time to solve for that by enhancing your book- keeping skills and processes internally or outsourc- ing to a reputable professional bookkeeper. Once you identify what you want to achieve in 2021, make sure you document your goal and that it is S.M.A.R.T., which means it is: specific (not vague), measurable (what metric will you use to track success?), achievable (set yourself up for suc- cess!), relevant (this goal should really matter to the vitality of your business), and timely (has a dead- line). Also, do not try to tackle too much, especially right now, or you will likely burn out. Keep it sim- ple and achievable. If you need help analyzing your financial state- ments, developing effective goals or need support with planning, the business advisors at the SBDC are here to help. Always free and confidential. ASTORIA — Capping a year in which the “law of supply and demand” nudged Clatsop County home values to a historical new level, December was marked by a leveling in the median price even while the housing inventory became tighter. There were only 68 houses listed for sale in the county in December, according to data from the Clat- sop Association of Realtors — less than half as many as in August and fewer than a third of the 209 active listings in March 2020 as pandemic restrictions were beginning to be imposed. A year ago in December 2019, there were 244 listings, equaling a decline of 72%. Only five active listings were priced under $249,000 as December ended, with five more priced between $250,000 and $299,999. The average selling price was $507,668 in December, 11% more than a year earlier, but a decline from the $540,516 in November. December’s median price — meaning half sold for more and half for less — was $389,500, about level with December 2019 and down from $426,000 in November. Houses are spending a median of 60 days on the market between the listing and closing, down from 101 days in December 2019 and 82 days in November 2020. The absorption rate — a real estate industry measurement of how fast sales are burning through the available inventory — fell below one month to 0.97, compared to 3.59 in December 2019. This means that unless more houses were listed, it would take less than a month to exhaust the avail- able supply. The average list price of the 39 houses listed in December was $771,110, up 23% from 12 months earlier. Eighteen of the new listings were for $500,000 or more, compared to six listings at that level a year before.
