The January Myth
Every year around December 31st, millions of people make the same deal with themselves.
“Starting January 1st, everything changes.”
New gym membership. New budget. New you. The motivation is through the roof. You can feel it.
Then it’s January 9th and you’re tired. By February 14th, the gym is back to the regulars and the new you is eating chocolates out of a heart-shaped box.
Here’s my problem with that whole plan. January isn’t a starting line.
In my business, January is a delivery date. The work that fills it got sold back in November.
Meet the Someday Squirrel
There’s a little guy who lives in your head. I call him the Someday Squirrel.
His job is collecting good intentions. He’s great at it. He gathers them all year long like acorns. The trip you want to take. The habit you want to start. The business you keep saying you’ll build.
Then he buries every single one under a pile of leaves labeled “after the holidays.”
Here’s how a typical November conversation with him goes:
You: I really want next year to be different.
Someday Squirrel: Love that. Totally. Big fan.
You: So should I start planning now?
Someday Squirrel: In November? Nobody starts anything in November. Have some pie. We’ll go hard in January.
And you believe him. Every year. Because he sounds so reasonable.
The Squirrel isn’t evil. He’s just bad with a calendar. His favorite word is “someday,” and his favorite month is always the next one.
The squirrels that make it through winter aren’t the ones who wait for the snow to start gathering. They’re the ones who remember where they buried the acorns.
How I Learned It: Starving
I’ve been cleaning glass since I was 17. That was 1992. And for a lot of those early years, January and February were the two months I dreaded most.
The phone gets quiet. The holidays are over. Nobody is thinking about their windows when it’s 38 degrees and raining sideways.
I used to call it starving. But here’s the thing I figured out later. Starving wasn’t really about food.
Starving was the lack of freedom.
When your revenue gets cut in half or more for two straight months, your choices shrink with it. You stop deciding what you want to do and start reacting to what you have to do.
And it wasn’t just me feeling it. I had guys counting on me. When there’s no work, your crew sits at home with a phone in their hand. And what do you think they’re looking at on that phone?
Job listings.
You have to keep your people busy, or they leave you. An idle crew is a crew that’s job hunting.
So the slow season was costing me twice. Less money coming in, and good people walking out the door.
I got tired of it. Tired of starving, and tired of not having work for my guys. So I started doing something about it.
Sell Today for Tomorrow
To understand the fix, you have to understand what a year looks like in my world.
April through August, we go hard. September, we catch our breath, sometimes. Then October, November and December, we go 180 miles an hour. Holidays are coming, guests are coming, everybody wants everything done yesterday. And the daylight keeps getting shorter, so you’re cramming more work into less sun.
Then January shows up and somebody unplugs the whole thing.
So here’s what we learned to do. We sell January in November. We sell February in December.
When customers are calling us in the busy months, we’re already talking to them. They want a lot done, and we help them get it done. And while we have them, we offer services for January and February that are easy to do and cost effective. Stuff that makes sense for them and fills our calendar at the same time.
We also learned to save. But saving only stretches the money you already have. Pre-booking makes new money show up in the months that used to be empty.
And we figured out the magic number.
If we walked into January about 50% pre-booked, we’d make it.
Not 100%. Not perfect. Just half. Half is the difference between starving and steady.
That’s the whole secret, and it fits on a sticky note:
Sell today for tomorrow.
The slow months don’t get won in the slow months. They get won during the busy ones, when you’re tired and slammed and the Someday Squirrel is whispering, “Worry about January in January.”
Steady, Not Busy
Did it work? It paid off.
We weren’t busy in January and February. We were steady. There’s a big difference.
The guys worked about six hours a day. They were making money, and they were getting some well-rested time after a fall spent going 180 miles an hour. Nobody was scrolling job listings. Nobody was wondering if they’d still have a job in March.
And here’s the part I didn’t see coming. I didn’t do it alone. We got our teams involved in pre-booking, so they could keep themselves working through the two slowest months of the year. When your people understand why the work matters, they start protecting the calendar like it’s theirs. Because it is.
Then there’s the customer side, and this is my favorite part.
When customers need us most, in the crazy months before the holidays, we show up for them. And I learned that when you help people when they need you, they’re happy to return the favor when you need them. They book the January job. They tell a neighbor. They remember who showed up.
That’s a win-win. The customer gets taken care of. The crew stays working. The business stays steady.
Maybe that’s just the giver in me. But after 30-some years, I can tell you giving first has never once been a bad business decision.
The Same Trick Works on Your Life
Here’s where this stops being a window cleaning story.
Every year, we set goals. For the business, and for us personally. And we don’t wait for January to do it. Right about now, we start reflecting on what we want to change.
Do we want more vacation time? More time with the grandkids? More time for our own recreation? Who do we want to spend our days with?
We ask the same questions about the business. And we’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out what we want to do and how we want our life to look.
Now, a lot of people reading this won’t get what we’re doing yet. Because they’re not 50-plus.
Something about that age is magical. You have patience. You can see what’s truly important. And you’re staring down the back half of your time on this planet.
Let’s do some quick math. If you’re lucky enough to live to 90, you get about 4,680 weeks. I’m 52. That means I’ve already used up about 2,700 of them.
When you see it like that, “someday” stops sounding reasonable. Someday is a terrible plan when you can count your Saturdays.
That’s why goals matter so much more as you get older. What do you want to achieve? What do you want to spend your days doing? Who do you want to spend that time with?
Here’s the good news about getting older. When your muscles start to go, your brain gets stronger. The lessons you learned the hard way in your youth set you up for your older days. Every January I spent starving taught me something I still use.
So selling January in November? Man, that’s wisdom talking.
Your Turn: Sell Your Own January
You don’t have to be 50 to steal this. You just have to start before the Squirrel tells you to wait.
Here’s how to do it this week, not in January:
- Ask the three questions. What do I want to achieve next year? What do I want to spend my days doing? Who do I want to spend that time with? Write the answers down. On paper. Today.
- Pre-book half your year. Use the 50% rule on your life. You don’t need the whole year figured out. Just walk into January with about half of it already decided.
- Put one thing on the calendar right now. The trip. The weekend with the grandkids. The first meeting about the business you keep talking about. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s an acorn under the leaves.
That’s it. No resolution. No fresh start. Just tomorrow, sold today.
The Someday Squirrel will still show up in your head every November with a piece of pie and a great excuse. Let him have the pie. You’ve already got January handled.
If you’re one of the people who’s been thinking about owning something of your own, and you want a business built to run steady instead of just busy, I’d love to talk. No pitch. Just a conversation. Reach out to me directly anytime.
