Are Your Current Habits Building the Business You Want? {2.04.26}

If this past month repeated itself 11 more times, would you be happy with how 2026 turned out for you?

January is more than just the first month of the year. It is evidence.

In this episode, I invite you to take an honest look at how January actually went and answer a powerful question most business owners avoid:

If you repeated last month 11 more times, would you be happy with where you land in 2026?

This is not about self-criticism or starting over. 

It is about using January as data to reveal the patterns, priorities, and default habits that are currently running your business and deciding what needs to change before the year quietly passes you by.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why January is a mirror, not a reset
• How winter energy can subtly pull you into comfort and fixed thinking
• The difference between running your business from where you are vs where you are going
• Why January exposes unconscious patterns more clearly than any other month
• The critical difference between motion and momentum
• Why “I’ll fix it next month” thinking compounds faster than you think
• How high-level leaders use data instead of mind drama to make decisions
• What to do if January did not go the way you hoped

If your January didn't go as well as you'd like, be smart and fix it now.

Join me in the Goal Getters Club here: https://www.jenlaffin.com/ggc

Thank you for listening!


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Transcript

0:44

Hey there. This is Jen Laffin and I wanna thank you for joining me again this week for this edition of the Goal Getter Guide podcast. I had something completely different planned for this week's topic, and if you follow me on LinkedIn or if we're connected on LinkedIn, you'll see that I've been. Talking a lot lately about future-based identity and running your business from the place you want to go, not the place that you are right now. And so as I was getting ready to record this week's episode, I thought this is a conversation that needs to go bigger because I'm seeing a lot of people who are making the choice to drive their business. Not from where they want to go, but from where they are. And we just turned the calendar from January to February, and so I thought this was the perfect time to bring this topic over here to the podcast. Now this is a really interesting time of the year because for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, we are currently wintering, meaning that these are the winter months for us, and winter is always associated. If you are not near the equator, it is always associated with coziness and maybe some snow and maybe some darker, longer days. That rolls over into how we approach our business if we let it, and if you've been letting this happen to you, I want you to make sure that you really. Tune into this episode and the things that I'm going to talk about because making a decision to run your business from a place of growth mindedness and not from a place of fixed mindedness is really important. And now is the perfect time to do this work because as we are just entering February. We can look back at the month of January and we can see how did that month go for us, and we can figure that If we were to repeat January 11 more times, what results are we going to get? Are you going to get results that you're happy with? I hope you do, but if you don't, that's what this episode is all about. January. Is evidence of the patterns that we run unconsciously. It is evidence of the priorities that we have and our default habits really, really come out to shine in January. And some of those default habits we must change if we are going to have the amazing year that we have planned for us. So I wanted to start by talking about where I'm seeing some of the business growth roadblocks show up. And this past week in my Goal Getters Club, we talked about the importance of planning for your business, like A CEO and not like an employee. And if you were someone who was an employee in the past before you became an entrepreneur, this is meant for you. So an employee. Plans their business from a to-do list. They see their to-do list as a list of things they need to do and check off that results in very familiar and repetitive days. So if you were to look at your January, did you have a lot of familiar repetitive days? If so, you may be planning your business like an employee, however, A CEO. Plans very differently. They plan for outcomes and to do this, they often use what I refer to as backwards design, which is again, something that I teach my Goal Getters Club. It's where you start with the end in mind and you plan the activities backwards. Now, A CEO also knows that things come up and things happen, and you occasionally have to. Rearrange your plan and make adjustments So comparing these two, an employee to A CEO, an employee plans. To stay busy. A CEO Plans to move their metrics, the things that they're measuring, their revenue, their profit, their expenses, their level of involvement, their level of growth, how they are reaching out and having conversations with people, how they are sharing their thought leadership. Those are all metrics that A CEO tracks and that they make adjustments from. So was your January full of motion? Like an employee where you are just staying busy or was it full of momentum? Things that really, really move the needle for you. Motion feels good. It feels comfortable, and you've heard me talk a lot about how our primal brain wants us to stay comfortable, but momentum is what we're really after momentum creates results. So ask yourself what moved the needle in January and what just filled my time? Those are two really important questions to consider. I want you to also think about what did you protect and what did you push off because what you wrote down on your calendar is not what matters, it's what you actually showed up for. And now if you were someone who kind of took the slower road in January and didn't get the kind of results that you had wanted. I want to talk about the, I'll fix it next month thinking, putting things off and kicking the can down the road. It feels harmless in the moment. As a matter of fact, sometimes we can even confuse it with self-care. That is not what I'm talking about, kicking the can down the road. Again, it feels harmless, but. Kicking the can down the road compounds fast. One month of doing that can easily become a quarter. A quarter of doing that can easily become your year. And this is how people wake up frustrated in December, shocked by the results that they actually were rehearsing all year long. This is why I'm reminding you to evaluate your momentum for 2026 now based on your January, because if you don't. The thoughts and habits of January are going to run your year. January exposes them early, so you still have plenty of time to intervene and to make some changes. You are looking for data here. As you're looking back at your January, you are not doing this to create mind drama. CEOs don't have time for mind drama. They look at the data. They make decisions based from that data. They do not. Allow themselves to make decisions from mind drama, and if they're seeing patterns and priorities and habits that are their default and not the ones that they truly do want to lead from, they make changes. They know that putting themselves in a space that offers them regular support, real time reflection, accountability, without the angst custom feedback that meets them right where they're at and leads them to the next level, that is what they choose. And this is what we do inside My Goal Getters Club. You've heard me mention it a few times on this episode, and if you are committed to growing your business. I invite you to join us there. Now, enrollment is opening and I would love to have you on the list. Visit jenlaffin.com/ggc to set up a time to talk with me and see if go-getters Club is a good fit for you because if you are January. Was not as amazing as you wanted it to be. We can fix that thank you for listening again today to the Go-Getter Guide podcast. I wish you an amazing week. And I will see you right back here again next week.