Flipping from 2025 to 2026

This is the last post of the year. I’m going to take a week off, but never fear: I’ll annoy your inbox again on Jan 4. This last email doesn't have a theme, either. It's just a loose collection of three things that I want to say, and then a thank you.

Start Taking Better Care of Yourself

I'll start by reminding you that you're not quite as important to the world as you think you are, and you've been keeping a stiff upper lip and holding things together at the expense of your deepest insides. You need some time off, whether that's in a big chunk or a regular, permanent shorter work week. The clients and employees pulling on you think they need you, but some of that is just instinctive reaching for comfort: “Hey, come enjoy the quicksand with me. This stuff is warm and soft. And why are we all getting shorter?” Whatever you do to cure this should probably require a plane, a bus, a train, a motorhome, a boat, or a new pair of hiking boots. You need a complete change of scenario or all the rage building up inside is going to start sneaking out more regularly, foisted on the next person who slides into that tight space in front of your car or the new employee who asks a very reasonable, simple question.

Be Sure This is What You Want

Next, you pretty much know by now whether you want to be in this field or not. For most of you, the last year hasn’t been for the faint of heart. The shallow waters drained away and the wrecks just under the surface were easier to see and harder to avoid. So if you really love what you are doing—about the field itself and about your role as a leader—then get your sh*t together and start being more intentional and disciplined. There is really no ceiling in this industry, and there's no other collection of humans who are this lovingly weird. This is an amazing place and you'll be welcome in it. But if you've seen some things that give you pause, especially when you're being totally honest with yourself, then you'll be fine somewhere else. In many ways, the access you and I have had to a better understanding of behavior and incentives and patterns and communication and persuasion just flat makes you a better human, and it's not a big deal to go be a better human somewhere else. With a little bit of luck, each of you probably has two or three impactful and lucrative careers inside you, and now is maybe the time. But if you're just “here”, please stop that. Running a barely profitable business with somewhat happy employees and clients who keep writing you checks is just a little bit beneath you. But I hope you stay, because there's a fantastic group of people in this industry. The water is not only fine; it's actually great. Quit worrying about AI, ignore what’s happening at the Holdco level, reset your expectations, and use that brilliant brain of yours. But strive and reach and don’t just coast.

Solve the Most Important Problem

Next, quit letting all the little things be pebbles in your shoes. Instead, look up and face the fact that the big problem to solve is new business, more now than ever. If you can solve the new business problem, you can solve everything else, but if you don’t solve that problem, nothing else matters. With a steady stream of right-fit opportunity, you can reinvent your firm one client at a time, charge what you should, hire for that missing role, bump your comp up to where it should be, and start stacking EBITDA results for that exit you’ve dreamed of.

And Thank You

I am grateful that I can work in a field that's relatively meaningful and fun. Getting through five years of grad school had me surviving the “hotline” (wearing an asbestos suit, working 10’ and resting for 20’) at Dalton Foundry, operating a catalog trimming machine at R. R. Donnelley, reading the meters for NIPSCO in the rougher neighborhoods where those fine folks chained their vicious dogs to the meters to keep you from reading them, and then finally mowing a dozen lawns every week. Those were all noble jobs because that's what it took to keep our young family in food, but I kind of prefer what I do now.

I am grateful that the biggest mistakes I've made left an indelible impression on me...without taking me and others down from my inexperience. One mistake was around personnel, another was around money, and the other was around a client. Even after many self-administered dope slaps, I still wonder what I was thinking. Still, I'm not sure I would have learned those lessons otherwise.

I'm grateful to be advising an industry filled with really smart, hardworking people who are remarkable entrepreneurs. You are just the kind of people I enjoy being around regularly.

I’m grateful that I get to work with my oldest son, Jonathan, who is a better entrepreneur than I am and whose M&A Division is growing at a crazy pace.

I'm grateful for a podcast partner and friend who is as crazy as I am to be willing to think out loud with the microphones on. Doing the podcast with Blair keeps stretching me and forcing me to think.

I'm grateful for a partner I still love being around, kids, daughters-in-law, grandkids, neighbors, and friends. The social fabric serves as a leash that tethers me to reality.

I'm grateful for the conversations with each of you as clients, too. Every conversation is about something that matters quite a bit to you, and because of that, it matters to me.

I'm grateful for you, the reader, whether you were here for that first email in 1994 or just joined last month.

Let's knock 2026 out of the park. My big hope is that you'll wrestle with the right things, that most of your decisions will be solid, that you'll see an impact in your work for clients, that your team will grow and prosper, that you'll make enough money to facilitate even more generosity, and that you'll have long periods of time when you'll think nothing about the business at all.

So do that over the next few weeks, and remember that sometimes leaders need to put their own oxygen masks on first, even when it looks selfish. Rest up, deeply.

Cheers.

David & Jonathan