New Year's resolutions are easily made and even more easily forgotten. Excitement surrounds them as the first days of the new year arrive, but after a week or so, the best intentions become lost in the fray of day-to-day life as business as usual takes over. When you're an escort, you may make several resolutions about your life and career, but this year there are three that should take prominence and become a way of life.

Escorts lead difficult lives; managing your own business and dealing with the stress characteristic to the industry can be challenging and overwhelming at times. You can make your life better and more manageable with these three new year's resolutions:

1. Make your health and safety paramount. If you aren't healthy or safe, nothing else really matters. Your success as an escort is worthless if you are putting your personal well-being at stake. There are three things to take into consideration when you are prioritizing her health and safety: 1) client screening, 2) personal security and 3) safe sex protection.
   1. Client Screening: If you don't have a consistent and thorough method of screening clients, you need to establish one. Many escorts rely on their gut instincts to warn them about clients who pose a threat. While this is all well and good, your gut instincts may not always detect a client who is unsafe to spend time with. In order to learn enough about a client to make an informed judgment call, it's necessary to collect some information about him. And, yes — some clients feel this is an intrusion into their privacy. But, if you are going to make yourself vulnerable by being alone with him, it's your right to ask some questions that will help you check him out ahead of time. Usually, a quick review of his full name, residential address and employment will give you the information you need to know, especially with the help of the Internet. You might choose to simply confirm he is who he claims to be with a brief Internet search, or running his name through a public records search could be enough to allay your fears. Regardless of your choice of background screening techniques, it's essential that you do something in order to verify his information. If not, you could be setting up an encounter with a known convict, an imposter or a police officer.
   2. Security: It's essential to operate with some sort of security precautions in place. Escorts who book encounters with clients without allowing anyone else knowing their plans are setting themselves up for potentially dangerous situations. Within the media, stories are shared daily about young women's disappearances and how nobody knew to be looking for them until it was already too late. Escorts shouldn't take these kinds of risks. When you book encounters, you should, at the very least, coordinate your schedule with someone else so that if you don't check in when you are expected, help can be sought. Hook up with another escort to be each other's check in, or confide in a close friend or family member. Additionally, it's smart to employ safety precautions when you arrive at an encounter by calling a security partner to let them know you made it safely and that the encounter appears to be non-threatening. Many escorts even go a step further to ensure their personal safety by employing a security guard/driver to accompany them to outcalls or be available during incalls. While this may cut into your profits, it also decreases the risk of assault, rape, theft and robbery, along with murder. Even though it's not something you want to think about, the chances of you getting hurt by one of your clients are real, and your only defense is to protect yourself.
   3. Safe sex protection: There are no excuses for taking risks with your physical health by failing to use protection with clients. Using a condom each and every time that you allow penetration of any sort on your body will help prevent contracting various forms of sexually transmitted infections and diseases. However, there are more concerns to consider when becoming intimate with a client. Anytime that you touch bare skin that could be affected, you run the potential risk of becoming infected with something. Lesions and blisters from infections can be in various places on your client's genitals that are not covered by a condom. Use caution when touching, and give him a quick look over (subtly) before touching him anywhere. In addition to looking out for skin issues and insisting that your client wear condoms, it's also prudent to invest in some finger cots if you include prostate massage in your services. Refuse to kiss clients with visible cold sores. And, get regular testing, yourself. If you get positive results for an STD or STI, take proper precautions to avoid spreading it to your clients. Your sexual health is essential to your success as an escort. Not only do you depend on being healthy, but your clients do, too. It's more than just making your clients wear condoms…it's an entire mindset about promoting safe sex. As you educate your clients, too, they become safer in their endeavors with others escorts. When this occurs, you all benefit.
2. Keep better track of your business. Running your own business is time-consuming, challenging and a labor of love. Successful businesses analyze their output, production, costs, profits, etc. in order to determine their levels of achievement, marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction. While you may not be a large business with millions of dollars in net profits, you can still benefit by tracking various aspects of your business to determine what you're doing well and what you could improve on, in addition to identifying trends that will help you plan better.
   1. Determine the statistics you want to follow. Probably, the most difficult part of this process is identifying which aspects of your business you want to track. Starting with the basics will be the most effective. As you perfect your methods, you may choose to incorporate additional elements into what you are analyzing. To begin, keep track of your income and costs. Keep detailed notes about your marketing efforts and compare them to your income during those time periods. Also, start counting the number of contacts you gain from specific marketing efforts. If you can, create some way that you can differentiate how clients got your contact information. Whether you directly ask them where they saw your profile or post or if you use a different contact number or email address for various forms of promotion, create a way that is easy for you to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts. As you are tracking these essential stats of your business, you must comprehend why they are important. Knowing how much income and expenses you have will help you realize if you are meeting your budget. Determining how effective your marketing efforts are will help you get rid of unproductive ones and make better use of your time with others. It also helps you identify how clients respond to your promotions.
   2. Follow through with your tracking efforts. Starting to maintain good records is just half the battle. You must create an easy and efficient method of gathering your information so it's convenient and uncumbersome to continue with the efforts throughout the rest of the year. Garnering the results for only a couple of months will result in useless information that was simply a waste of time. Even if it becomes tiresome and boring, you must keep up with your efforts to maintain records about your clients' interest, monthly income, expenses, etc. As you progress through the year, you may determine that the way you started to accumulate your information is as efficient as a new way you've developed. Provided that you are still collecting the same information without influencing it in any way, it doesn't matter how you do it. If it makes sense to track it a new way, do it. The important thing is to continue collecting the data.
   3. Analyze the results. The data is no good unless you look at it. Compare the information against itself in order to make sense of it all. For instance, if you changed marketing techniques in May, examine the results in May and June compared to earlier in the year. Use the number of client contacts you made to determine if they correlate to any increased/decreased incomes. Consider the time of year, when you track trends in your income. Holiday seasons, inclement weather and other factors make different times of the year more or less profitable for many escorts. Check for any trends you can see in your information. Determine things you did that were effective and others that caused you to lose business.
   4. Use the data results to make better choices and plans. After you've analyzed your data, use it to make informed decisions about your business. For instance, if you started promoting yourself on a particular website and noticed a huge increase in business, it is wise to continue and expand your marketing on this site. If you can determine that you followed through with more contacts and it lead to better bookings, make a better effort to get back in touch with clients who were slow to respond or reply. By paying attention to your information, you may learn a lot about what will lead to success as an escort. There is no hard, fast formula that every escort can incorporate in order to excel. However, if you pay attention to your statistics, you may find trends that will tell you exactly what to do (or not to do) in order to reach your goals.
3. Make more time for yourself. Escorts sometimes fail to book in time for themselves, always responding to client, family and friend needs first. However, after extended periods of time of self neglect, you start feeling worn down and less than stellar. For your physical health, appearance, mental welfare and interpersonal relationships, you need to find a way to schedule in time for you.
   1. Physical health benefits may be realized through self care. If you don't take time to care for yourself, it's likely that you're letting yourself go. Being on the go, you probably don't eat the most healthy diet, take vitamins, work out regularly or pay attention to other health concerns, such as your blood pressure or cholesterol levels. You must factor in time to pay attention to your health. Create a schedule where you get even a few minutes to exercise daily, prepare healthy meals and consult with your doctor about other issues besides your sexual health.
   2. Your physical appearance needs your attention. Even though you may take time to fix your hair and do your make-up every day, there are other things you may be lacking when it comes to taking care of your outer beauty. Take the time to get regular hair appointments and colorings, perform regular mani/pedis and complete good skin care routines to keep you feeling soft. Carve out some time to devote to experimenting with your make up or visit a professional for a consultation in order to enhance your perfected skills and modernize your look. Go shopping for a new outfit once in awhile that will really enhance your curves and amp up your confidence.
   3. Give attention to your mental welfare. When you're a busy escort, it's challenging to incorporate hobbies, fun and carefree adventures into your schedule. But, regardless of how difficult it is, you need to do it for your own mental health. Studies prove that women who do not allow themselves some pleasure from simple, benign things have tendencies to burn out faster, experience depression and develop other mental health issues. Protect yourself from this by dedicating some time to doing things you love. Whether it's getting outdoors for more activities or putting together puzzles, it doesn't matter. Making time for things you love is the point.
   4. Schedule time to enhance and foster interpersonal relationships. A person's life is pretty empty if they allow their relationships with friends and family members to fall apart. As a social species, we rely on others for many things, including that feeling of simply belonging and being happy. Our relationships are necessary elements in satisfying lives. If you don't allow enough time to engage with others who are important to you, the loss is great in more ways than just growing apart with your loved ones. It has a huge impact on your mental and physical health. Keep those relationships strong by spending time with the people who are important to you.
4. Be proud of who you are. In today's world, it's pretty easy to bow to societal pressures and believe the worst of yourself, because you are an escort. However, don't do that. Make it a personal goal for the year to be proud of yourself, revel in the challenges you face and overcome and know that you are a good person with worth. Also, appreciate all of your many positive traits, not just the ones that clients praise you for. It's very easy for escorts to grow reliant on their appearance as their only good characteristics. Don't fall into this trap: realize that the entire package of what you have to offer makes you special.