Depending on your view of the term “Happy New Year” I may be far too late in offering tidings on the New Year. Also, living in Minneapolis, this new year hasn’t been awesome so far. I’m not swinging my newsletter or content political, but all things considered, I’d take 2025 back so far. I’ve had several folks reach out and check in, and I appreciate the thoughts more than I can express.

Anyway, back to this month’s newsletter already in progress. With a New Year comes planning and thinking about what success looks like for you and your business. This can be exciting, daunting, or a bit of both. Every year around this time in my Peer Groups I talk about the need to plan for the year ahead. Without fail, most members that planned ahead find themselves more aligned with that plan even if they didn’t review it throughout the year.

Planning ahead is important, especially in the MSP space. Life in an MSP is routinely hectic, so taking a moment to plan ahead and think about what you want to accomplish in the year ahead is a smart move. Otherwise you end up a slave to the tyranny of the urgent.

If you happen to be part of our Pax8 Peer Groups you can expect to hear about planning a bit throughout the year. Especially if you are in our Flight Plan Peer Groups that help get your MSP to $1M in revenue. Planning is vital for the growth of your business.

I also talked about planning last January. It’s almost like it’s a cycle. In that previous newsletter there are links to some documentation and a plan document that I created for my day job at Pax8. It’s a solid plan, and if you don’t already have your own template one is just a couple clicks away. If you are an EOS or Scaling-Up company you have your own plan templates as well. The template isn’t the important piece, but rather the activity of doing the planning. If you need help with the activity let me know. I’ve been through quite a few cycles here.

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” – General Patton

Once you’ve built your plan it’s time to shift into execute mode. Execution of your plan is where many MSPs and SMBs run into trouble. Take the top level plan, clearly identify the deliverables, and build the steps to achieve the desired outcome. It sounds simple, but it isn’t. My opinion is that clearly defining the desired outcome is the most important piece here.

Here’s your call to action: Take a day, an afternoon, or heck, just a couple of hours to think about and write down what you’d like to see happen in your business this year. Future you will be happy you did.

Recent Content

I’ve been working on a bunch of things over here, but recently I’ve been talking a lot about Insurance. Partly because it’s important, and partly because we needed it for my wife’s new business. It’s not sexy, but it’s important. Here are my recent videos on Insurance:

• Insurance for small MSPs
• Insurance update for 2026

Here are a couple of additional recent videos that you might appreciate:

• AI Policies for You and Your Clients
• Take Some Time Off Already!
• The Art and Science of New User Onboarding

Looking for a Bookkeeper for your MSP?

I will continue to mention this here and there as a minor piece of my content, but my wife and I started a new business. We started Nordic Sky which is a bookkeeping service specifically designed for MSPs.

Our offering is more than just keeping your books clean. Anyone can do that. We bring the MSP business expertise to help you analyze your books with a monthly deliverable that contains your Balance Sheet, P&L, Cash Flow statement, financial KPIs, and graphs that speak to your business.

If you are looking for a leveled up bookkeeping experience check out https://nordicsky.us.

Here’s to a great 2026. Thankfully the sample size is small at the moment.

Adam