It is Monday. It is the first of December. It is the first day of the week and The first day of the month. We are one month away from the start of a new year. You could not script a better moment to stop, breathe and check in with yourself. What are you doing. What are you achieving. Is what you do each day actually floating your boat or are you simply keeping yourself busy. Too many people are stuck on the hamster wheel. Running, Sweating, Exhausted, yet going nowhere. Today is the perfect day to step off the wheel and step into intention. This can be a great day. It can be the start of a great week. It can set up December to be a great month. And it can become the springboard that launches you into the best year you have ever had. But only if you choose it. Do not shuffle papers around your desk. That is like organising the deck chairs on the Titanic while it is already sinking. Do not focus on the brakes. Focus on the accelerator. Do not focus on being busy. Focus on creating progress and momentum. Ask yourself some simple questions: What will I do today that makes me feel like a winner? What action can I take right now that moves my life or my business forward? What can I commit to that creates motion, momentum and meaning? Make it a great day. Make it a great week. Make it a great month. Prepare yourself for an incredible 2026. Everything begins with a choice, followed by massive immediate action. Because intention changes nothing. Movement changes everything. 2 quotes that come to mind as i write this post: Andrew Carnegie: “The first man gets the oyster. The second man gets the shell.” and: “If you are not the lead dog, the view never changes.”

Happy December, everyone. Here are a few words of appreciation for Mike, and the impact that his "One Day, One Plan" event in Peterborough had. Glad to meet many of you in person at last, so let's take this forward, end the current year on a high, and get 2026 off to a flying start!

Today is Budget Day in the UK. And it is being billed as one of the toughest budgets in living memory. People are terrified. The lack of certainty has had everyone talking, worrying, second guessing. Some have paused decisions for months, hoping this budget would bring clarity. Hoping the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t a train coming the other way. But here is the truth. Change happens every day. Always has. Always will. In the last 20 years alone we have lived through: → The global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 → A decade of austerity measures across the UK → Brexit and the uncertainty that followed → The Covid pandemic and worldwide shutdowns → Supply chain collapses and labour shortages → The war in Ukraine and its impact on energy and commodity prices → Inflation hitting multi-decade highs → Interest rates moving from historic lows to steep rises → The cost of living crisis and energy price shocks → Rapid technological disruption including AI and automation → Global shipping and logistics breakdowns → Political instability in multiple regions affecting trade and investment If you are searching for certainty, you will stay in anxiety. If you are waiting for stability, you will stay stuck. The only real skill is learning to operate in a changing environment. To adapt, to adjust, to keep moving. Whether you see today’s budget as good, bad, or downright ugly, the world keeps turning. And you have to turn with it. But here is what happens instead. People put their lives on hold. They wait for the budget. Then they say we are four weeks from Christmas so they might as well wait. Then January. Then February. And another year disappears. Procrastination is the mother of all failure. Action is the mother of success. So stop waiting. Stop holding back. Stop convincing yourself that tomorrow is safer than today. Take action. Because action is always the answer.

Do you live in past stories rather than the current reality? Do you lose energy in thoughts that never become true? Do you spend more time planning or worrying than actually experiencing the moment you’re in? Read this book review if you want to think better, lead better, and remove the internal noise that's limiting performance. 'The Power of Now' book review, now live in Classroom: https://www.skool.com/thegrowthsyndicate/classroom/84055912?md=b04f01882de1401d9d574fc17b45e0f0

During Question Time on the BBC last night, AI was one of the subjects discussed, with students playing a big part in the conversation. There were no surprises for me during the debate, but some valuable insights from many other perspectives. Whilst we're in an age where a large proportion of students are turning to AI not only for research, but to write essays, job applications, etc., and social media is flooded with content which... quite frankly... is beyond the skills, knowledge and experience of many of those who post it as their own work and insights, a member of the audience came out with this point which resonated... If people (remember that students using AI was at the core of this debate) use AI in place of thinking for themselves, and submit content (homework, essays, social media posts, etc) which they couldn't discuss or explain for themselves, then we have a problem of deception. But beyond that, when people are using AI in this way to submit "perfectly formed" which content misrepresents the real level they're at, then they tend to not realise when they're wrong and why they're wrong. And here's the key point that someone in the audience said, "People learn more by their mistakes then their successes, but if they don't know what their mistakes are because they're so reliant on AI to make them appear better than they are, they're not going to grow."