I’m on a ski holiday in beautiful Austria as I write this.
Fresh air. Snow underfoot. Mountains everywhere reminding you how small you are. A bit of speed. A bit of wobble. Doing my best not to end the week in plaster like a good friend of mine.
It’s a brilliant place for a clear head which is always useful at the start of January.
January isn’t really about resolutions. It’s about housekeeping.
It’s the month where you quietly set the foundations for the year ahead.
Getting organised. Personal planning. Business planning. The bigger picture of who you’re becoming and where you’re actually going.
If you miss January, the year tends to drag you along instead of the other way round.
The key is getting it out of your head and onto paper.
Head to hand.
Hand to pen.
Pen to paper.
If it stays in your head, it’s just a swirling cloud of ideas, worries, imagination and half-decisions. Once it’s written down as instructions, goals and timeframes, something shifts. Especially if you write it in positive speak. Your brain hears what you say to it, and it starts pulling things towards you.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about advice I’d give to someone just starting out and for someone who’s been at it for years.
And it’s the same advice.
Find shortcuts.
Not cheats. Shortcuts. Ways to make things happen quicker with less pain. We can all work hard, suffer a bit, and learn every lesson the long way. Or we can speed the process up.
My top three shortcuts haven’t changed.
First. Find a mentor. Someone in your industry who’s already been there. Someone who’s seen the potholes, the dead ends, the shiny distractions, and can help you avoid at least a few of them.
Second. Immerse yourself. Really educate yourself in your field. Not just what you do day to day, but the wider industry, where it’s heading, and the peripheral knowledge that separates the good from the best. If you want to be number one, surface-level understanding won’t cut it.
Third. Be ruthless with your day. You should not be doing repeatable, non-urgent tasks. That’s not your job. Your job is the work others can’t do. Building relationships. Understanding new technology. Creating deals. Buying businesses. Finding superstars. Thinking. Deciding. Moving things forward.
Keep those three front of mind and everything else starts to magnetise around them.
Once you’ve written your year plan, you might not look at it again.
That’s fine.
The power is in the exercise of doing it. You stretch the thinking. You set the direction. Then you get on with the year. When you look back at the end, you usually realise you overshot what you thought was possible anyway.
This week I’ve travelled across Europe. I’ve seen small communities built around village life and big international businesses founded in unlikely places. I spoke to owners developing satellites. Others running software companies who can see AI coming straight at them and are having to pivot hard or walk away from markets entirely.
I’ve stayed in hotels that taught me more about meet-and-greet in five minutes than any training course ever could. Sitting here in Austria, I’ve been genuinely impressed by the standards, the pride, the way people do the basics properly.
Different cultures. Different businesses. Same lesson:
If you can steal just one percent from what you see elsewhere and bring it into your own business, you’re ahead.
It also gives you that space I always bang on about. Time to think. Time to zoom out. Time to notice when you’re actually doing things well.
So that’s me this week. Snow, speed, fresh air, and a bit of contemplation about the next chapters.
Make the most of January. Do the housekeeping. Get it out of your head. Onto paper. Decide what matters. Then move.
I’ll try to keep my balance on the slopes.
James
P.S - Why do mountains make people smile…
because they’re hill-arious!