If you're comfortable being uncomfortable, then read on.

Tomorrow's July 1.

New financial year. If January is the right time to shed a few kilos, then surely July is the right time for a business makeover...or 'glow up'. 

In FY2026 if your profits, or your bank account didn't land where you wanted them, here's the truth:

It will likely be the same 12 months from now.

Unless...

You change your strategy. Suprise! Who would havw thought that serious growth requires serious change.

Now, if next year you're happy to be in the masses - and make no mistake, the masses are failing right now, then go ahead and carry on. 

But if you're comfortable being uncomfortable, then read on.

I'm not here to tell you to do more of what you already know. Post more. Email more. Run more ads. You've heard that a thousand times and your bank account already told you how that went.

The masses do that, and the masses are mediocre at best. We should want to be special.

If what you know was going to fix it, it would have by now.

So this year, don't do more of the same.

Enter unchartered waters.

Here's what that actually means.

Most founders' "strategy" is just last year's tactics, turned up. Same channels. Same offer. Same funnel. Just louder, with a bigger budget behind it.

Increasing spend isn't a strategy. It's what you do when you've found a way to scale. It's not what you do to scale. The output of a successful strategy is to spend more money on ads. The input is not to spend more money on ads. The input is that crazy, genius, mercurial decision that you make this year, that pays off, in spades, 

This year, make a mantra, stick it on your wall - Heck, stick it on your forehead: "I'm not going to double my revenue by double my marketing spend. Or hiring more people. Or some other crap that involves spending loads of cash."

Real growth lives in the stuff you haven't tried, because you didn't know it existed.

 The pricing model you've never tested. The channel you wrote off without ever properly running it. The offer structure that would change your margin overnight, not your traffic. The retention play that makes your existing customers worth double, while you're still out there paying for new ones. A product strategy that's actually linked to your revenue targets, not just "drop more SKUs and hope."

You don't know what you don't know. That's not an insult. It's just the gap between where you are and a genuinely different Financial Year result.

So let me ask you straight.

Do you actually have a plan for FY27, or do you have a vibe?

A plan has numbers attached. A revenue target broken down by month. A margin you're protecting, not hoping for. Specific moves, with a specific reason you believe they'll work.

A vibe sounds like "grow 30% this year." No mechanism. No idea how. Just a number you wrote down because it felt ambitious.

Most founders have a vibe. They call it a plan because it's written on a slide.

Here's how I'd be thinking about your FY27 plan.

Not a revenue number. A profit number. Pick the dollar figure you actually want to walk away with, then work backwards.

What margin gets you there. What MER you need to hold to protect that margin. What sales number gets you there?

Most importantly, and what is most neglected is, what are the big fat meaty projects that are going to land you that profit change, that margin improvement, that Opex reduction, that sales growth?

More of the same?

I think not.

It's likely to be:

Something you've never tried that could move the needle here. Not the thing you're comfortable with. The thing you've been avoiding because you don't know how it'll go. The thing you learnt.

That's the plan. Profit target, backed by a real mechanism, with at least one genuinely new move in it. In fact, many moves. The 80/20 rule dictates that most of your moves won't work this year - and that's ok. So if it's 20% of actions that create 80% of the outcome - what are you putting in to find that magic 20%?

Two hints:

1. The 1% changes move you 1% forward. Most of you want 100% growth at least - so we need the 100% moves not the 1% moves.

2. If most of the moves won't work - surely that means we need to make....more moves?

Make more moves this year. Make bigger moves this year. Starting tomorrow.

Everything else is a hope with a due date.

Are you feeling uncomfortable. Good. Comfortable is how you got here.

This is the one time of year you get a genuinely clean slate. Don't waste it doing the same dance harder. Use it to go somewhere you haven't been.

If you want help finding the unknown unknowns in your business, the stuff that isn't on your radar because you've never had a reason to look for it, book 15 minutes here and we'll sense check your strategy. That's the whole point of an outside set of eyes.

New financial year. New waters. Your call whether you actually enter them.

Until next week, Paul

How to work with me

1. Want a free lesson on how to start your online business in 5 steps. Click here.
2. Watch my Ecommerce Growth Engine video. Click here.
3. Book a 15 min ScaleCheck™. Click here.