What's your New Year's resolution for your business? We're well past the mode of survival, but are you still caught in the culture of now?

It may be tempting to focus on taking advantage of the positive environment to grow sales wherever and however you can. But good economic times are a great time to make sure your business is the best it can be so that when the next inevitable downturn comes, you're prepared to make it through.

Here are some resources to help make sure your company is fit for the future:

1. Building Blocks to a Profitability Mindset– It's likely that much of your current business is unprofitable. According to Jonathan Byrnes, senior lecturer at MIT and author of Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink, up to 40 percent of your business may fall into this category. In this article, Byrnes talks about how distributors can make adjustments to their business to lessen unprofitable business. "(G)et past the fallacy of change," Byrnes says. Change doesn't have be a massive reorganization; think of it more like a fitness plan for your company.

2. Making Money with Small Customers– Often the unprofitable business comes from small customers who place small orders. But that doesn't have to be the case, according to Jonathan Bein of Real Results Marketing. The real problem may be that you're trying to serve these customers in the same way you serve your most profitable customers when there may be better, more efficient methods available. Focus on finding the most effective channels for each of your customer groups to make them more profitable.

3. A Practical Approach to Lean– Lean is not a "one-and-done" event; lean is all about continuous improvement. And the first step to implementing lean for a distributor is to make sure that the right processes are in place to foster that continuous development.