A very happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a great New Year’s Eve and are looking forward to a prosperous and positive 2017.

This post would have come yesterday, however, after having an absolute skin full on NYE, I was incapable of very little function on New Year’s Day, so it’s coming today!

New Years resolutions

At this time of the year, many will be looking at resolutions to better themselves during the course of this year. Diets, exercise, saving money, eating better will all be a focus. All perfectly fine. However, I am growing increasingly skeptical of resolutions made in the New Year. I think it encourages us to make changes at the start of a year, then to trail off during the course of the year. By the end of the year we’ve all let those resolutions go, aiming to restart them in the next New Year.

It would be more helpful to see resolutions as the start of a permanent lifestyle change, rather than just something to enact at the beginning of a year and hope it lasts for a while. I think a lot of it is getting in the right mental frame of mind. You can’t make a lifelong change to the way you live your life if you think that a New Years resolution is something to start on January 1st and hope it lasts until the summer. Be clear, if you’re starting a resolution now, it’s a change that should be permanent, to improve your life for the long run, not just a short spurt.

Personally, there is very little I would change for 2017. I eat pretty well. I workout regularly. We save money well too. However, there is one major change I will be making this year and making a long term habit of, and that is to spend more time with my better half and family. Although 2016 was a very good year for me on the business front, one thing that really started to dawn on me during the course of that year is that for all the success in business I have had, I’m spending less and less time with the person I love the most. And what is all that business success worth if you cannot share the spoils and advantages with the people you care about?

So, during the course of this year and beyond, I will be making sure I spend less time in front of the screen and keyboard at home, and more time with the ones I care about doing the fun things. We should be working to live, not living to work.

DGB Business

Business resolutions

2017 looks like it’s going to be an interesting year for the glazing industry. There is overwhelming positivity from installers heading into this new year, yet there is vast uncertainty on the economic horizon. Steadily rising inflation, Brexit negotiations, currency dips and rising glazing material costs means there is plenty to navigate round.

To help navigate, there will be plenty of glazing businesses that will be making their own changes this year to make sure 2017. During the holidays I wrote about how companies will need to become much more efficient in the way they run their businesses if they are to make a success of this year. You can read that here. But because of what I mentioned above, installers and fabricators are going to have to step up their efficiency game, without shedding staff, to make sure margins are preserved and growth still happens.

Plans for DGB

As for me and this website, I’ve got plenty of things up my sleeve to try. I’ve got a couple of new ideas I want to try which I’ll be talking about soon. And in terms of things to write about, there’s the FIT Show, Brexit, new products, awards and a whole boat load of other things. So there will be fresh DGB content every day as usual.

It’s going to be a hell of a year. Time to strap in and ride the backside out of it!

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