“Assessing Our Aging In Place Businesses One Month Into 2019”

One month into the new year is a great time to review and reflect on both our business plan and how we are doing to determine if we are making the progress we intended

We are thirty days into the new year, so how does our aging in place services business look to us? Is what we anticipated? Is this where we planned to be after four weeks? Did we really plan for this year, or are we just taking it as it comes?

We typically begin an aging in place renovation project with an assessment of the living space and the client’s needs so we understand the value of the assessment. This is a time to apply the evaluation to our businesses to determine if this is where we intended to be at this time or we need to make some adjustments as the rest of the year unfolds.

There is no rigid set of evaluation criteria to use. Each business is different, and who is to say – except us – whether we are on track to meet our projections and our goals? We are the ones who set these for ourselves so we get to decide if we are on target or a little ahead or behind where we thought we would be. It’s time to quietly look at where we are and to make any course corrections that might be needed to get us back on track.

We have a lot to look at, but this isn’t the only time we get to do this. This can be a daily or weekly activity as well as something we do each month. We can use longer time periods for our evaluation as well such three, six, or twelve months, but those longer periods don’t let us respond as quickly to market conditions and things we might want to incorporate into our businesses to be more in step with our market or the clients we intend to serve.

Some of us may have made new year’s resolutions about personal or business intentions. Setting aside the personal ones and looking at the ones involving our businesses, we may have decided that we needed to be more organized, decisive, outgoing, punctual, knowledgeable, or something else that would enable us to serve our clients the way that we felt they expected that we would. Maybe we wanted to be better listeners or more patient. Whatever those resolutions, affirmations, or desires may have been, if we had any of them, the year is still young, and there’s still plenty of time to make progress. If we need to adopt some other activities that we think would help us connect with our clients in a stronger way, this is a good time to make that determination.

The winter weather may have curtailed our ability to get outside and call on potential clients or schedule work that we need to do. That just means that we have more time to plan for what we want to do when we are able to get back to our normal schedule. Being in a construction related field – whether it’s as a general contractor, remodeler, handyman, builder, trade contractor, or another aging in place professional – we are quite familiar with weather delays and influences on our schedules and on the timing of our clients.

Cold weather is just one of those conditions that comes along. There are the rains in the spring and the resulting mud. There is still plenty of snow to come in many parts of the country. There’s the related ice and sleet also. In the spring and summer, there is the potential for strong storms, heavy rains, and sometimes hail mixed in – plus the extreme heat in some places.

The point is that the weather happens, If that is delaying or affecting our businesses now – and we had not counted on this being a factor – we just need to make up for it when the weather is better. This is a great time to assess where we are and where we need to go – and how we intend to get there – when we can get back into action. Anytime there is a weather delay, regardless of what it is, we aren’t the only ones affected. Other businesses, our suppliers, and the general public that we serve also contends with these conditions. As unpleasant as it might be at the moment, and as much as it may play havoc with our schedules or projections, we can get back on track and make up for lost time – if we are prepared to do so.

A month from now when we look back at this evaluation period, will be impressed with the progress we have made and how we are navigating through 2019? This is a great time to take the necessary steps to make that happen and improve the likelihood that we will have a good report in another month.

 

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