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Now, let's talk strategy.

January is when last year’s bad decisions finally show up.

If your strategy lives in Slack threads and half-remembered meetings… You don’t have a strategy.

Don’t be that CEO.

Today I wanted to pass along some planning tools to boost your 2026 decision-making:

First: The annual planning framework I use with all my clients.
​Second: A template to put it into action.
​Third: Rapid-fire links I found valuable this month.

Your Strategy Needs A Strategy

Every founder knows the feeling:

You said yes to 19 things this quarter.

A giveaway here.
A random feature there.
Another idea you slipped into Slack at 11:47pm.
A conference sponsorship someone swore would “change everything.”

Everyone is working harder.
Everyone is working longer.
And somehow… revenue is flat.

This is the CEO death loop.

Most companies don’t stall because they’re lazy.

They stall because they’re busy in all the wrong directions.

More hours.
More tasks.
Zero momentum.

The real problem?

Most CEOs don’t have a strategy problem.
They have a decision-making problem.

When you don’t know what truly matters, you say yes to everything. And when everything is a priority… nothing is.

YOUR STRATEGY NEEDS A STRATEGY

That’s why you need a strategic plan.
Not a wishlist.
Not a vision board.
A system for momentum.

Here’s the fix:

Run the MDMA cycle.

Measure → Decide → Market → Act.

Then run it back.

Measure what’s actually happening.
​Decide what actually moves the business.
​Market the plan internally so no one is guessing.
​Act with discipline and aggression.

Once you do this, the bottleneck becomes obvious.
And every business only ever has one bottleneck.

For Example: One of my clients spent the last 3 years perfecting the product. Revenue flat. Switched efforts to top of funnel awareness, revenue exploded.

(FYI if you don’t know it… you’re the bottleneck.)

This is where annual strategic planning becomes your unfair advantage.

To do this, you need four things:

1. A Planning Team of Deciders:

You have two types of people in your company:

Deciders and Doers.

Deciders own outcomes, not activities. The people who win repeatedly… not the ones who talk the most.

Example: My Head of Sales who owns the revenue number, not just "sales activities."

2. A Vision Dashboard:

Your 3-year map. Clear targets. Zero ambiguity. If your team can’t see the destination, how can you expect them to all row in the same direction?

Example: "$100M ARR, 30% margins, 2 product lines, 5,000 customers by 2027. 3 Strategic Projects to get us there."

3. A Strategic Flywheel:

The operating system of the company. When you spin it, everything else gets easier. Great CEOs obsess over this. Everyone else obsesses over tactics.

Example: Every happy customer creates content that attracts 3 more customers. Simple. Repeatable. Compoundable.

4. A Strategic Roadmap:

The multi-quarter sequence that forces focus and kills shiny object syndrome.

Example: Q1: Fix retention. Q2: Scale what's working. Q3: Launch adjacent product. Q4: Expand internationally.

When you combine all four, chaos disappears.

Decisions get easier.
The bottleneck becomes obvious.
Execution becomes predictable.

The founders who scale aren’t the ones who do the most.
They’re the ones who do the right few things relentlessly.

You have 2 weeks left in January.
2 weeks to find your bottleneck.
2 weeks to build your MDMA cycle.
2 weeks to stop being the CEO who says yes to everything.

Use them or lose another year.

⬇️ To Download:

👉 CEO Strategic Planning 2026 👈

🔖 To Bookmark:

• System: This is still the best goal planning framework I’ve found
• Sunday Planning: Win Sunday. Win the week.
• Secret CFO: 7 principles behind budget planning
• Comp Rule: Every hire should generate 5x their salary
• 5 elements of strategic planning: Miss one = bad outcome

Last but not least.

Your reminder of what your team needs to perform their best:

See you at $100m 🤝