Every fall I have some version of the same debate: tartan or leather? Am I a black leather moto jacket person this year, or a three-quarter-length plaid coat person? Some years the details shift, but apparently I assign an unreasonable amount of identity to outerwear.
The coat isn’t really the point. Something about fall makes me want to declare who I’m going to be next. Summer lets identity blur around the edges. September makes me crave definition, a sharper silhouette, a clearer direction. Apparently, I would like both my wardrobe and my life to have a point of view.
Which brings me to the other question I find myself asking every September:
Okay. Now what?
That desire for definition doesn’t stop at the closet. September makes us want a plan. What am I going to focus on this fall? What am I changing? What am I launching? What needs to happen between now and the end of the year? My clients are asking versions of the same questions. Should I hire? Spend more on marketing? Prospect differently? Finally launch the thing I’ve been talking about since March?
The instinct is to answer “what’s next?” by looking forward. I’d argue for looking backward first. Before deciding what the next four months need from us, take a hard look at what the first eight have already taught us.
January gives you intentions.
September gives you evidence.
By now, you know things you couldn’t possibly have known in January. You know where your business actually came from this year, not where you hoped it would come from. You know which marketing investments produced something and which mostly produced invoices. You know which clients energized you and which made you question your life choices. You know what you kept promising yourself you’d do and somehow never did. You know which systems are working, which relationships are growing and where your business is still harder than it needs to be.
That’s useful information. And yet September tempts us to bypass it in favor of something new. A new plan. A new campaign. A new system. A new goal. Reinvention is simply more exciting than examination. But before adding anything to the final four months of the year, it’s worth asking what the year you’ve already had is telling you.
Where is the evidence pointing? There are probably things that deserve more of your time and money because they’re already working. There are things you’ve tolerated for eight months that are making your business unnecessarily difficult. And there are ideas, relationships or opportunities that keep resurfacing and deserve to be investigated, even if you don’t yet know what they’ll become.
That’s a very different exercise from setting fall goals. It’s less about inventing a new version of your business and more about paying attention to the one you actually have.
The pressure of “what’s next?” makes us think the answer has to be something we haven’t done yet. But sometimes what’s next is already hiding in what’s happened. Eight months of conversations, wins, mistakes, wasted money, unexpected opportunities and things that worked better than you thought they would have left you a trail of clues.
Coaching Corner
Take thirty minutes this week and audit the year you’ve already had. No giant strategic planning exercise. No color-coded spreadsheet required. Just take a piece of paper and make three columns:
Double Down. What has already shown you that it works? Resist the temptation to get bored with something simply because it isn’t new.
Fix. What is costing you unnecessary time, money or energy? Pick something you’ve been tolerating and decide to stop dragging it into the rest of the year.
Explore. What keeps getting your attention? Give yourself thirty days to follow one idea, relationship or opportunity without requiring it to become anything yet.
Choose one from each.
You don’t need twelve Q4 priorities. You need a few intelligent decisions based on what you now know.
January asks: What do I want?
September asks: What have I learned?
And maybe that’s the better place to start figuring out what comes next.
