Preparing Your Business for 2026
As we put 2025 into the rearview mirror and cross into the new year many business owners are looking ahead, and rightfully so, on how to navigate the coming 12 months, and the various challenges and opportunities it will bring. Reflecting on what worked in 2025 and what didn’t, in an honest and proactive way will enable you to effectively extract the most out of the coming year.
This often presents a challenge to many entrepreneurs, especially ones in their first year or so of running their companies. Taking an honest analysis of oneself is difficult in business and life, the most clear-cut way to help facilitate this effectively is to seek outside advice or expertise.
Accountants, consultants, partners and suppliers are great places to solicit unbiased data and strategy. As an example, inspecting your balance sheet and having it revised after gathering hard numbers from different unbiased sources will paint a clear picture into your brand highlight what has transpired this year financially and help shine a light on the future illuminating a path ahead as we enter the new year.
A useful tip I like to provide so some of our clients is to break down data, which at first will seem voluminous, into bite-sized sections or parts coinciding with specific timeframes within your business’ fiscal calendar i.e. semiannually, quarterly, monthly, bi-weekly etc.
This helps highlight your own business’ unique seasons or business cycles, ebbs and flows in revenue or expenditures, just as larger companies have different times of the year more profitable or consisting of higher volume of sales or logistics activity so does yours, albeit on a smaller scale. Having the ability to grasp this concept and outline the time frames adaptable to your specific business is key heading into 2026 so you can create an apples-to-apples comparison of performance year to year while identifying areas to accelerate potential growth. It is also valuable to identify the highs or lows your brand experienced during the previous 12 months, then once isolated, explore what went right/wrong during that timeframe, and work on the processes needing revision as they will indeed come into play again next year.
Moving into a new chapter on the calendar affords us with time to pause and reflect. A reprieve to retool, rearm and attack at the ambitions and goals set for your business whether that be more efficient within operations, streamlining processes or maximizing profit margins.
However, the reality is this doesn’t have to only occur on Jan. 1 of the year, although a psychological starting point for many things in western society, it could happen more often for your business throughout the year, the main objective is to get comfortable and productive with this self-audit and strategy producing process.
So what are your business’ objectives or targets for 2026? What is your plan to make them a reality? What changes will you make based on the data and information gathered from your balance sheet and from other research? The successful brands have answers to each of these questions, it’s important you do as well.
To gain personalized guidance for your business on this topic and others contact us.
- Vince Calace
Founder - Venture Business Development