Honestly, the last 180 days have been absolutely awful.

Originally sent exclusively to The Letter subscribers on December 1st. Want to be the first to get my personal newsletter in your inbox every Monday at 7am? Subscribe for free here.

You know what?

I’ve been sending letters like these to the good folk of the entrepreneurial community for some time.

I know you enjoy it when I open up and tell you my secrets, my struggles and my biggest wins. The day to day just is not that exciting.

We as humans love the unusual. We love the rare. We lean in to ultimate losses and ultimate wins.

Discovery, and being the first to know something, gets our juices flowing.

These next few paragraphs will be the most important I have ever written in terms of making a real difference to your bottom line and your love for your business.

I have had a tough six months. I have taken a few punches that were not pleasant.

I have leaned into the difficulty and embraced it as a welcome friend, and the truth is, the difficulty has made me better.

I have become tougher, although I admit I have cried during this last half year. I am a grown man of forty, but some of the last 180 days have been gut wrenching, anxiety filled and absolutely awful.

My responsibilities are huge and they are a burden I would not wish on anyone.

Running a fifty million enterprise is not for everyone. Doubling in size within twelve months is far from normal.

With growth comes a slackening of the tiny things. The tiny things matter.

Few visionaries and truly entrepreneurial people exist who can take risks and do the impossible.

I believe they are half a percent of the population. Some find themselves leading charities, schools and governments, placing their neurodiverse skill set into other areas of the economy away from enterprise.

We need that too. Entrepreneurs at the front of government can be powerful, and you see the same in successful academic institutions.

All of this sounds lovely, but where is it going?

I have regained my firm belief that the world turns on E plus M equals S, and the M you choose is the difference between extraordinary success and anaemic results.

We have not been hitting the numbers I expected in the first six months of this year.

I know most people would love what I have, but we have only made around one and a half million of EBITDA so far. You might think that sounds amazing, but not when you have tax to pay, repairs and renewals to fund, and mortgages and loans to service.

I budgeted to make four million this year, so we should have made two million by the six month mark.

We did not, because we blamed Rachel Reeves, the economy, interest rates and the war in Ukraine. All boring and all a load of nonsense.

Before that it was Covid, then the credit crunch and before that the banking crisis.

Boring, boring, boring.

We cannot accept excuses. We must be better.

Lean into it.

Lower than expected numbers send me round the bend. I hate them.

After a good whinge, I retrained my brain to focus on abundance. I wrote list after list for each of my companies on how to create more sales.

As I sat at my desk I would write in big letters across my notepad:

“How will I drive more sales today?”

I am a team player, but on this, if it is to be, it is up to me.

I started chasing the teams harder on what we were doing about sales and asked them to show me the results.

This led me to think deeply about how to make people more accountable and how to give them clearer vision plans.

I realised my old style of running a smaller business just would not work now.

Going to dinner with six people is very different to going to dinner with two thousand people. The motto of all for one and one for all works in the early days because everyone is on the same page.

But when you reach the size we have grown to, you need a different system. (why I use my Accelerator Operating System)

Vision comes from me.

Management and accountability come from your implementing manager.

You must write it down. I lock myself away every weekend with no distractions to work on vision planning. It is the only way. Monday to Friday does not cut it.

Weekends are when I do my best work. I appreciate thats not for everyone.

If you want serious results, you will have to find more time and do things a little differently to everyone else.

Which brings me to trade offs.

If you want more, there will be trade offs.

Less fun time. Less family time.

If you want fewer results and a comfortable life, you can take the path most people travel.

If you are unusual enough to take the path least travelled and you want a life filled with climbing bigger mountains, I will be here every Monday.

This week I have been teaching my dog to meow, I thought it would be handy for him to have a second language.

Couple of quotes I love:

Beware of the tyranny of the minority and as always… what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed

To your continued success,

James

PS. If you’d like to grow your business with me - join me on accelerator, if you’d like to join me on a discovery call, please email my team: info@jamessinclair.net more details here: Business Accelerator.