Hello Street Food owners,

Welcome to the New Year!

This is our first official message to you in 2019 and we are excited to write you this letter of love. We hope you had a pleasant time over the holiday, and most importantly a pleasant rest. You must be hearing very many of your friends declaring their resolutions for the New Year. It must feel odd that you do not have one, and that you do not write yours all over social media like everyone does. Resolutions are great things to have as guide by our bedsteads, something to read through all the time to help us to stay focused. In the same vein, resolutions can kill a dream if handled the wrong way. We will tell you how.  While we are glad to see that you are inspired all through the year, leafing through your notes on New Year resolutions is not the way out. It is great to see street food owners try to map out newer strategies on how to make things work better, how to fix old mistakes, and how to find more effective ways to soar in the business. However, 90% of New Year resolutions fail. So here, we introduce you to SMART goals which are way more effective than the resolutions.

There are smarter ways to stay inspired and attain your desired goals for the year and always. Now let’s look at the reasons why you should not bother with New Year resolution.

Setting Unattainable Goals

This is one of the major reasons these resolutions die off by the third month of the year. While spelling out resolutions for the year, because you are at a high point of our motivation, you may make promises that you cannot keep to yourself and your business, you make resolutions that cannot be attained. As the year advances, you may lose focus and allow things run the way they used to.

Irrelevance

Many resolutions are merely declaring what someone wants for the duration of one year. There are no deadlines or actions or plans attached to these resolutions.  If you do not add deadlines to your dreams you end up in the 90 percent whose resolutions fail. In addition, resolutions are tiring and because there are no dates policing these proposals, they never make it past the third month.

Call for a Drastic Change

Resolutions call for a drastic change, for a bad habit which needs stopping, for a positive behaviour to adopt. These moves are great and commendable but unfortunately they do not last. This is because your street food is a life business that would be there through all the seasons and years and probably have your next generation feed from it. This means it has nothing to do with resolving to do things right in just one calendar year.

Easily Put Off

When life throws responsibilities our way, which is a very normal occurrence, resolutions are easily put off because you do not feel mandated to keep to them. When you feel a little uncomfortable, resolutions are the first things to be tossed aside because you are not mandated to stick to them. This implies that they are mostly kept at a convenient time.

Lacks Life’s Process

There are no hard and fast rules to achievements in life but there are basic rules. These rules are lacking in resolutions. Most resolutions are about end results and not about the step by step process to success. Desired results take time and must be approached gradually.

Procrastination

One of the reasons why resolutions are not for you is that they are usually demanding, and because you do not possess the ability to make them come true, you are likely to keep postponing the action to later dates. You’d rather sleep off on a Friday night than stay up and do the hard work. With time resolutions become boring and you stop looking at them.

Now looking at the many reasons we gave you and judging from your experiences, you may be able to tell that New Year resolutions are not perfect for your street food business.

Now what should you do?

While it is great to make a goal that will challenge you, the goal must also be achievable. A deadline must be attached to this goal to prompt you to keep to it. Also ensure that your dream is measurable with numbers. Make sure you stick to this plan, implement it also into your schedule and then take action. As we always tell you, it is difficult to achieve your goals especially in the food market. The goals you create when you are extremely motivated have to be goals that you must keep even when you are extremely demotivated.

Now, your reflections on your business are constant. They do not have to be boxed in one year’s resolutions. While you are evolving, you always eliminate strategies that do not work and adopt the ones that work. Instead of adopting resolutions, we advise you to make SMART goals and follow them as guide. This is the way to achieve success over a long period of time whether or not you are inspired.

What are SMART goals?

Specific

What do you want to achieve? Why do you want to achieve it? You have to be very specific on your goals. It is better to say “I want to increase my income by 15 percent” than to say “I want to make more money.”

Measurable

You will have to incorporate numbers in your goals. That way you can easily measure them and see how you advance. This helps in keeping you encouraged.

Achievable

Your goal must be something you are capable of doing. You may want your goal to be challenging but make sure you can do it.

Relevant

You must make sure that your goals must be relevant to your business. In your street food business, adding a couple of employees is a relevant goal, adding 30 more when you have just one shop is not.

Time-bound

This is where you add a date to your goal. This helps you stay on track and also remind you of what you need to do at a particular time.

Your 2019 goals should be incorporated into SMART goals. Always work on them at every chance you get. It is also alright to make resolutions but you must try to craft them to goals.

We wish you the best in the New Year.