Keeping It Simple
The fastest, simplest ways to grow your business - no jargon, no fluff. Practical strategies that actually work for SME owners in the USA, New Zealand, and worldwide.
There is a sentence quietly stalling more small businesses than any competitor ever could: we'll sort that out in the new year. It sounds sensible. It is usually a handbrake, applied in September and left on until February.
If you are asking how to stop being the bottleneck in your business as the year winds down, here is the direct answer: most of what gets deferred to January does not actually need to wait, it just feels safer to wait. The gap between those two things is where growth quietly leaks out of SME businesses every single year.
Across nine companies of my own and a hundred-plus SME clients, I have watched the same pattern every September through November: real decisions, hiring calls, pricing changes, system fixes, get shelved under the banner of a fresh start, and the fresh start never quite delivers what the delay cost.
The Deferral Habit
Here's the enemy: not laziness, but a very human bias toward delaying anything uncomfortable when a natural calendar excuse is sitting right there.
Research by psychologist Piers Steel, widely cited in procrastination studies, found that chronic procrastination has roughly quadrupled since the late 1970s, from around 5 percent of the population then to more than 20 percent today. The calendar did not change. The number of comfortable excuses to delay a decision did. New year, new plan is one of the most convenient of all, because it sounds like strategy instead of what it usually is: postponement with a good story attached.
The Now-or-January Test
Run every deferred decision on your list through this three-question test before you let it wait for January.
1. Does this decision actually depend on the calendar. Almost nothing does. Most new year decisions could start on any Tuesday.
2. What does one more quarter of delay actually cost. Put a number on it, lost revenue, a frustrated hire, a customer drifting to a competitor. Vague delay feels free. Priced delay rarely does.
3. Who owns this by Friday, not by January. If nobody owns it with a date this week, it will still be on the list in February, new year or not.
"Kevin has simplified a lot of the processes that have been floating in my head. It has made things easier to navigate as we begin to launch a new service offering to the market. I feel confident and able to do this, thanks to Kevin."
— Estelle Kruse, Icehouse Coaching Programme
Why It Is Hard To See In Your Own Business
Owners rarely notice their own handbrake, because every individual deferral feels reasonable in isolation. It is only when someone outside the business lines up all twelve deferred decisions at once that the pattern, and the real cost, becomes obvious.
That outside view is most of what a good coach actually does in the final quarter of the year: not adding more to the list, but forcing a straight answer on what is genuinely calendar-dependent and what has simply been parked.
Quick Wins This Week
- List every decision currently waiting for the new year.
- Run each one through the Now-or-January Test this week.
- Price the cost of delay in dollars, not vague discomfort.
- Assign a Friday owner to at least one deferred decision today.
Key Takeaways
- Run the Now-or-January Test on anything you are tempted to defer to next year.
- Price the real cost of delay instead of treating it as free.
- Assign an owner and a date this week, not a vague new-year intention.
- Get an outside view to spot the pattern across all your deferred decisions at once.
If we'll sort it in the new year is already on your to-do list, that's the decision Kevin helps you make now instead.
Kevin D’Ambros-Smith
Kevin is the founder of Simple-Growth and a business growth coach with experience at DDB, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has co-founded 9 companies, coached 200+ business owners one-on-one, and holds a 9.5/10 NPS. Every article on this blog reflects real-world experience - no theory, no fluff.
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