Fresh Starts They Are A Comin'

Most people seem to fall into two camps regarding New Years Resolutions

1. They embrace January 1st with SMART goals and hope
2. They actively ignore the New Years Resolution hype and say, "I'm not a resolution kind of person"

I'm trying out something new here: I'd like to see YOUR vote in the poll! You'll see the poll results immediately after submitting your answer.

(Here's what I expect to see in terms of results: according to YouGov, in 2024 about 34% of U.S. adults planned to make resolutions. For the 18-29 year old bracket, that jumped to 52%, and the 30-44 bracket was 44%. Two months into 2024, 70% of those who made NYR stuck with them.)

Whether you want to or not, 1/1/2025 will inspire you to have a fresh start. It's science: temporal milestones like New Years, birthdays, Mondays, etc. encourages us to start a new "mental accounting period" that makes it easier to put the past behind you and look ahead to the future.

Not only that, but the way the calendar fell this year there's even more fresh start jujj:

• Many people take off Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, smack dab in the middle of the week. Some people are taking off Monday the 23rd and the 26th and 27th because of that interruption.
• Many people take off New Years Eve and New Years Day, and similar to above, are taking off Monday the 30th and Jan 2nd and 3rd.

The vibe for December's back half is going to be unproductive at best.

With an unproductive December, a workforce coming back from a well-earned break, and the January 1st temporal landmark, 2025 is going to kick off with gusto.

Resolutions be dammned, you're going to be feeling Big Fresh Start Energy in January.

Entertain for a moment if you harnessed this energy and gave yourself permission to indulge that fresh start. THIS COULD BE YOU:

• Hire someone on Upwork to test out a new marketing strategy
• Fire that toxic person
• Shoot some experimental video content
• Re-organize your workspace and purge some desk tchotchkes
• Send a handwritten postcard to your favorite client, thanking them for their business
• Blow up your business
• Start a new business

I would be remiss to mention that I timed the Black Friday Small Agency Assessment offer to ride this wave. It's a good business practice to get a neutral third-party's eyes on your plans and the Small Agency Assessment is a low-cost way to do that at a time of the year that will do the most good.

One of MY fresh starts is to rethink this newsletter. Not end it, but improve it. Make it more meaningful. Feature more of you and less of me. Potentially rename it.

Help me shape the future of this newsletter by sharing your thoughts in a 3-question survey. I'll be doing a drawing for a $25 gift on December 25th: fill out this short survey to be entered to win!

A TL;DR from the CRO

My 2025 New Years Resolution is to spend a little more time each week on my appearance.

-Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer

New Blog Post: Turning "Wants" into Actionable Strategic Plans Through an Offsite

When the holidays are over and a fresh year stretches before you, how can you strategically set your year up for more success than the last one? With an offsite! Here's how...​

I went to a board game convention last weekend and I did myself a favor by getting all my work done before I flew to Philadelphia on Thursday. I had a few hours of unexpected downtime, and since I had gotten my work done I indulged myself:

I took a look through some old newsletters from other creators that I subscribe to but rarely read.

Being in a different city with unexpected time and a folder of new ideas got me super motivated. I realized how much fun I have writing this newsletter but had put so little thought into growing/evolving it.

If you've enjoyed reading this or previous TL;DRs, then I'm asking you for one more thing: upvote this post on LinkedIn talking about this newsletter.​

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Embracing change this holiday season,

Dan from Learn to Scale​

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​PS. Who knew that humans were so Incredibly difficult to jiggle?​