I began the month thinking that my article was going to be about brand mix, and how to balance giving variety and choice to your customer without overstocking and overspending.

But as the weeks have passed, I realised that my own primary focus right now is on setting my targets for next year, so that I know where I am going and, more importantly, how I’m going to get there, and I believe that is what we should all be doing right now.

Why wouldn’t you want to start the year with a set of clear goals and objectives, knowing that without them, you won’t know what success looks like?

Targets are often based solely on the previous year’s performance, and there is definitely an argument for this, otherwise how do we continue to grow? But in order to be meaningful, other factors should come in to play - it’s fair to say that this past few years have pretty much been impossible to predict, and so we can’t easily base our targets on those anyway!

So, when it comes to developing my targets, I adopt a slightly different, more personal approach.

Of course, I include all the overheads of running the business, stock costs, staffing costs, premises costs etc. and I try to factor in the likely increases that will be coming during the next 12 months. For me this year it is staffing costs, (the increase in minimum wage coupled with having a member of staff going onto maternity leave that I need to cover) but I also think we will see a rise in delivery costs and likely increases in dress prices as suppliers have to also cover increased production costs and import duty as a result of Brexit.

Then I look at my personal goals and cost those out. This could be a simple as paying yourself a little more next year than you did this year, or something more directly rewarding, like taking you and your family to Disneyland! The ‘what’ isn’t important, what is important is that it matters to you and will improve your life in some way.

By doing this, it means you are actually invested in achieving your goals, it gives them meaning and foundations based on you personally and this in turn drives you to achieve them.

Now you need to look back, I have actually used 2019 figures for this exercise this year, because I feel happier basing my targets on real numbers achieved for a full year, but you can use 2020 or 2021 if you’d like to, what’s important is that the targets you’re setting are based on fact, that way they will be realistic and are therefore more likely to be achievable.

Stick with me here, I know it’s not exciting, but you’ll feel such a sense of achievement once it’s done, you’ll be happy you did it!

As a rule of thumb you should aim to increase sales by 10-20% on the previous year, but remember, you are the one setting the targets and so they can be as stretching or conservative as you like, just make sure they will challenge you and move the business forward, whilst hopefully also giving you a better life this year than last year. It’s also vital that they are not too high and impossible to achieve, as this will simply demoralise and demotivate you and your team and the targets will become meaningless as you’ll stop trying to hit them.