Barry Moltz outlined his 12 New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 in the American Express OPEN Forum for Small Businesses. In the spirit of Number 7 — “I will focus on less” — I’ve narrowed his list down and tweaked it for my Top 10.

1. I will build a company, not just feed a hobby. Avoiding employment and working from home on something you like are not sufficient reasons for running a business – they won’t fuel long-term, sustainable growth. This is year, I will evolve my relationships with Culture Pilot, FanLaunch and SockWonkey from passion-filled “fun things to do” to building real companies that can thrive, even when I’m not there.

2. I promise to only hire the best people and compensate them well. The only way to build a successful business is through a superior team: Eric Lunt (Feedburner, BrightTag) discusses how to build a great team here. The key to creating a superior team is in finding the right people with passion, expertise and shared vision and developing an environment in which they can thrive together. When you’ve created that team, the key to keeping them is making sure you compensate them appropriately. They may not want a six-figure salary, but more equity, or more flex-time, or more say in the decision-making process. Find out what they want, and compensate them well. Superior teams deliver awesome results. Less-than-superior teams drain valuable resources.

3. I will be slow to hire and quick to fire. I will make sure to take time in hiring the best person for the job. If an employee is not working out, I will let them know and let them go as quickly as possible, so we can save ourselves the time and effort it would waste in trying to make a mismatch fit. Just because a puzzle piece looks like the right shape, doesn’t mean it’s the right piece — trying to shove it in and make it work just ends up in an messed up (big) picture in the end.

4. I will not outsource the math. As much as I love math in the abstract, I hate it in the practical. However, from now on I will commit to understanding every number of the three key financial statements — profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow — so I can better understand our business history and market context, so we can plan for the future.

5.  I will raise my prices. Customers pay for value. We provide a great deal of value. Therefore, we should charge appropriately for the value we provide. As it is, we have undercut ourselves for a such a long time that our own clients and business associates have told us we need to charge more. When your clients tell you you should charge more, you probably should. Then we could afford to hire more “best people and compensate them well,” so we can provide even more value for our clients.

6. I will not use social media to sell my products. I will use social media for customer service and to build relationships that may turn into leads, but not for hard sales. I have a strong distaste for spammers and pushy marketers (they actually make me vomit), so I definitely don’t want to turn into one. Besides, we get better results from “pull” branding over “push” marketing.

7. I will have no more than 60 emails in my inbox. I will look at each email once and deal with it by deleting it, acting on it immediately, scheduling it (Boomerang helps!), or archiving it to a folder. Sifting through irrelevant and old emails repeatedly wastes time.

8. I will stop multitasking. Let’s face the fact that multitasking causes you to be less productive, not more. Your brain can only do one thing at a time and multitasking just allows it to switch back and forth quickly. Turn off everything that distracts you in your office for at least part of the day.

9. I will call it quits if I have lost the passion for the business. Businesses are like relationships: If you have no passion for it, you have no business being in it. It’s not fair to you or the people you’re in the business/relationship with, because you not only waste your time (and life moments), you also waste other people’s time and drain those valuable resources that could be going to someone else who’s passionate about it.

10. I will focus on less. My motto for 2012: “Simplify.” That is all.

Have I missed any? What are *your* resolutions?