By Evan Vitale

At the conclusion of every year – and the start of a new year – the gloom, doom and boom stories start to appear with business predictions for the next 12 months.

As a business owner, investor, manager or even a staff employee, it can be difficult to sort out what’s good and what’s bad when it comes to reading news involving industry forecasts for the upcoming year.

Here’s the best approach one can take when “experts” make their good-news, bad-news predictions:

• Ignore them.
• If you must read prediction articles, use it for informational (and entertainment) purposes only.
• Remember, you – and you alone – drive your business. If you read “it’s going to be a bad year for your industry” articles and then spend all day wringing your hands and rubbing a worry stone then, yes, it’s going to be a bad year for your business.
• Prove forecasters are wrong. Clip or print the article and use it for motivation. Use it as a blog post. Tell everyone you’re going to prove that business is good, etc.
• Be positive, especially in front of your employees, customers and clients. If you feel negative industry news is affecting your staff, have a meeting or staff lunch. Tell them your plan to keep things moving in the right direction, despite industry “predictions” from an online magazine writer who doesn’t know anything about your company and the customers/client you serve every day.

At the end of the year, no one will remember whether industry predictions were right or wrong. The gloom-and-doom article writer has moved on (perhaps to another company) and will be  writing a new article about the positives and negatives for other business industries for 2017.

One of my business friends always tells me “onward” whether his business is growing, when he celebrates earning new business or if he loses a customer.

Keep your head up and stay positive. Ignore the pundits.