Most entrepreneurs waste their best research every December. They close out the books, breathe a sigh of relief (or frustration), and immediately start planning for next year with fresh eyes and clean slates. New goals. New strategies. New energy. It feels productive. It feels like progress. But here’s what I’ve learned after building and selling two companies: that fresh start might be costing you millions.
Last week, Beth and I sat down to kick off planning for 2026. But we didn’t start with a blank whiteboard or a vision board or any of that inspirational stuff the business gurus love to sell you. We pulled out last year’s plans. Every single one of them. Not just the final revenue numbers or the year-end P&L. We pulled out every strategy we launched in 2025—the ones that crushed it and the ones that crashed and burned spectacularly. Because your best intel for 2026 isn’t hiding in a market trend report or buried in competitor analysis. It’s in what you already tested. What you spent real money on. What your actual customers responded to—not what you hoped they would respond to or what some expert said they should want.
The Backwards Planning That Changed Everything
Here’s what we learned about strategic planning after Beth’s first company was acquired by a large corporation. In that corporate setting, everything was about “rolling up to the goal revenue number.” Leadership would hand down revenue targets from the top, and our strategy had to build backward to hit them. Inevitably, this meant taking five growth strategies, assigning revenue projections to each one, and then reverse-engineering an execution plan to reach those numbers. Revenue target first. Strategy second. It rarely worked. Because when you start with the number, you force-fit strategies that sound good on a spreadsheet but don’t reflect what actually works in your business.
At our own firm, we did it the exact opposite. We pulled out last year’s strategies. We looked at what worked, what flopped, and what needed tweaking. We made hard decisions about what to keep building and what to kill. We used that data to figure out what we wanted to do next year. And then—only then—the dreaming started. What revenue could we realistically get with those strategies? What’s the best way to execute them? Where should we invest more? Where should we pull back? The numbers came last, not first.
This approach felt risky at first. It felt less “strategic.” Less buttoned-up. Less like what you’re supposed to do when you’re running a real business. But it worked. Because the strategies were rooted in what we knew—not what we hoped or what some corporate planning model told us we should be able to achieve.
The Diagnostic That Changes Everything
We’ve been doing this exercise for years now, and it’s become non-negotiable in our planning process. We take every strategy, every initiative, every “big idea” we executed in the previous year and sort them into three groups.
The first group is SCALE. This is the stuff that worked. The wins we’re doubling down on. The strategies that delivered results. These go in what we call the victory lap group—and yes, we actually take the victory lap. Even if we’re limping across the finish line. Even if it wasn’t as big a win as we’d hoped. Your team needs to see you celebrate what worked before you ask them to tackle what’s next. They need to know their efforts mattered. That you noticed. That you’re building on their success, not just moving on to the next shiny thing. This group tells you where to invest more time, more money, more energy in the coming year.
The second group is KILL. The ideas that flopped. The strategies that drained time and money without moving the needle. The initiatives that sounded brilliant in the planning meeting but died a slow death in execution. For us this year, our biggest idea flop was spending two months developing a strategy we decided not to execute. It was a good strategy. It would have worked. But it required a level of consistency and time investment we weren’t willing to commit to doing right. So we stopped. Before we wasted six months half-executing it and wondering why it wasn’t working.
Here’s the thing about the KILL group: if you don’t have any strategies to stop, you didn’t dream hard enough last year. You played it too safe. You only tried things you knew would work. The entrepreneurs who scale are the ones willing to try bold strategies and then have the guts to kill them fast when they don’t deliver.
The third group is PIVOT. This is the toughest group. The most nuanced. The one that requires the most honest assessment. These are the ideas that have a nugget of something good but need serious tweaking. You’re not ready to abandon them yet, but they can’t stay as-is either. They showed promise. They delivered some results. But something’s off. The execution was wrong. The timing was wrong. The messaging was wrong. This group is where the magic happens—if you’re willing to do the hard work of figuring out what needs to change.
When Looking Backward Saves Your Future
Let me tell you what we learned about that third group when our consulting sales pipeline dried up during COVID. Our pipeline dropped to a quarter of its usual size seemingly overnight. We panicked. We did what most entrepreneurs do when sales slow down: we pushed the sales team harder. Demanded more calls, more reports, more activity. Nothing worked. The harder we pushed, the worse it got.
So we went back. Not just to last year’s data—but to the years before COVID hit. We pulled out our pre-pandemic sales records and asked a simple question: what actually sold the best? The answer was clear: smart, challenging thought leadership. Research studies. Us boiling down dense academic research into actionable insights for CEOs. In any given year pre-COVID, about 30% of our incoming clients had read our stuff first and wanted to learn more.
But here’s what had happened: right before COVID, sales was going crazy. We were closing deals left and right going in cold. High-velocity sales. No content marketing required. So we stopped producing the research. Why spend time writing when we could just pick up the phone and close deals? Then COVID hit. CEOs stopped spending money overnight. They were only considering products with really high ROI. Really proven value. And the best way to prove ROI? Show them research. Give them data. Educate them first. We had accidentally abandoned the exact strategy that built trust with our most valuable clients.
So we pivoted back to it. We stopped chasing meetings. Started publishing deep research that filled gaps Wall Street analysts were leaving behind. No sales pitch. No call to action. Just smart content. It felt painfully slow at first. We weren’t “selling.” We weren’t even asking for meetings. But prospects who had been reading our research for months—sometimes years—started picking up the phone. They were already sold. They just needed to be educated first.
The insight? We already knew this worked. We’d just gotten distracted by what was working in the short term and abandoned what worked in the long term. That pivot informed our entire sales and marketing strategy for the next three years. It became our competitive advantage. It’s why we could close Fortune 1000 deals with a team of five people while our competitors needed sales forces of fifty. We didn’t discover this from a consultant or a new framework. We discovered it by looking at our own history and asking: what worked before that we stopped doing?
The Shiny Toy Trap
Here’s what most strategic planning gets wrong: it’s all about finding the shiniest new toy. The latest marketing channel. The newest sales automation tool. The trendiest business model. And yes, some of that matters. You should try new things. Test new approaches. Stay current. But most of your strategic plan shouldn’t be about new toys. It should be about polishing the toys that already show promise. And throwing out the ones you tried last year that didn’t work.
This is the diagnostic part of planning. The clinical review. No shame. No premature celebration. No sugarcoating the failures or downplaying the wins. Just data. Just truth. Just honest assessment of what actually happened versus what you hoped would happen. Because the entrepreneurs who win aren’t necessarily the ones with the most new ideas. They’re the ones who ruthlessly analyze what they’ve already tested, double down on what worked, and have the guts to kill what didn’t.
What This Actually Looks Like in Practice
When Beth and I do this exercise, we’re not just sorting strategies into groups and calling it done. We’re asking very specific questions. Which marketing channel brought in actual revenue—not just vanity metrics like likes and shares? We’ve killed entire marketing strategies that looked great on paper (thousands of followers! High engagement!) but delivered zero actual customers.
Which team initiatives flopped because we didn’t commit enough resources—versus which ones flopped because the idea itself was flawed? This distinction matters. Some ideas deserve another shot with better execution. Others need to die permanently. Where did we waste time because we were afraid to stop something that wasn’t working? Sunk cost fallacy kills more businesses than failed ideas. We’ve all held onto strategies way too long because we’d already invested so much. What worked that we accidentally stumbled into—that we should make intentional next year? Some of our best strategies started as happy accidents. The key is recognizing them and scaling them deliberately. What worked years ago that we stopped doing because we got distracted? This is the question that saved our business during COVID. Sometimes your best strategy is already sitting in your own case files.
The answers to these questions are worth more than any competitor analysis or industry trend forecast. Because they’re based on YOUR business. YOUR customers. YOUR team’s actual capacity and capabilities. Not some guru’s one-size-fits-all framework or someone else’s success story.
Your Most Expensive Mistake Is Ignoring What You Already Know
Next week, Beth and I will let ourselves dream. We’ll talk about the big swings we want to take in 2026. The ambitious goals. The stretch targets. But first, we look at what actually happened in 2025. Because here’s the truth most business advice won’t tell you: your 2026 strategy doesn’t start with a whiteboard and a dream. It starts with a deep, honest analysis of the experiments you ran in 2025. The strategies you tested. The money you spent. The time you invested. The results you got—and the results you didn’t get.
All of that data is sitting in your email archives, your financial reports, your CRM, your project management tools. Most entrepreneurs ignore it and start fresh because it feels easier. Because looking at what didn’t work is uncomfortable. Because admitting you wasted six months on a strategy that flopped feels like failure. But that data—especially the failures—is the most valuable market research you’ll ever have. It’s real. It’s specific to your business. And you already paid for it. Throwing it away and starting from scratch is like burning money.
So before you start mapping out your 2026 goals and writing your vision statement and setting your quarterly targets, I want you to ask yourself one question: which group do you need to build first—SCALE, KILL, or PIVOT? Because the entrepreneurs who scale—who build businesses that actually work, that actually grow, that don’t constantly feel like they’re on the edge of collapse—aren’t the ones with the most new ideas. They’re the ones who know which old ideas to keep building on. They’re the ones who celebrate their wins, kill their losers fast, and have the wisdom to know which strategies deserve one more shot with better execution. And sometimes, they’re the ones smart enough to look back even further—to what worked years ago before they got distracted—and bring that strategy back to life.
Start there. Do the diagnostic work. Sort your 2025 strategies into three groups. Then—and only then—start planning 2026. Your future self will thank you.
