The end of the last financial year is not just a compliance deadline. It is your annual reset, the clearest opportunity you have to step back, assess what is genuinely working, and clear the path for a stronger 2026/27.
The Art of the Prune
Healthy growth requires pruning. That means taking an honest look at low-value clients who consume time disproportionate to their return, and at “zombie” costs, the expenses that are still running on autopilot long after their usefulness has passed. Think software subscriptions nobody uses, supplier arrangements that made sense three years ago, or service lines that drain energy without meaningful margin. Left unchecked, these quietly erode the capacity you need to grow.
This is the moment to prune them.
From Technician to Entrepreneur
Here is a statistic worth sitting with. According to my dear contact Keith Randell, who had an extensive career as an international Brain Science Researcher collaborating with the world’s best universities, only around five per cent of the population naturally thinks and behaves like an entrepreneur.
The remaining majority, including many highly skilled, dedicated business owners, naturally operate as technicians, with around another five per cent who naturally operate as managers. Technicians are excellent at what they do day to day, but find it genuinely difficult to shift into a visionary mindset. This is not a character flaw. Our school systems of years gone by were largely designed to produce capable operators, not strategic thinkers.
The invitation at year-end is to put down the tools for a moment and ask bigger questions. How successful and far-reaching could this business be if there were no inhibitors? What would it look like to move from managing the business to leading it?
We bring something relatively rare to this work. I am an entrepreneur first and a chartered accountant second. We have a wide combination of skillsets within our Love to Grow team. That combination means the numbers always serve the vision, not the other way around.
The W.E.A.L.T.H.™ Model as Your Reset Tool
The W.E.A.L.T.H.™ framework is built for exactly this kind of strategic reset. Applied at the start of a new financial year, it helps you move beyond survival thinking and toward possibility thinking, asking not just “can we afford this?” but “what steps are needed to make things stay working well around your vision?” Ask yourself why, followed by when. We will help you with the how.
A key question the model surfaces: does your team know your vision? Is it written down? Is it discussed? And critically, is there a clear, consistent connection between your words and your financial budgets? There is often a disconnect here, and it costs more than most business owners realise.
Your Resources Are Closer Than You Think
Business owners consistently underestimate the resources available to them. When we work through the LUCK framework, which stands for Leadership, Understanding, Connections, and Knowledge, it becomes clear that most of the gaps are fillable. The question is who you have around you.
Love to Grow is one of those connections. So is your team, if you invest in them. Staff loyalty is one of the most undervalued assets in a small business: less training cost, no lost institutional knowledge, no recruitment drain. Making sure there is enough in the year ahead for you and for the people around you is not a soft goal. It is a profitability strategy.
Your 2026/27 Springboard
Use this reset to do four things:
- Prune what is no longer serving you
- Write down your vision and check it against your budget
- Identify one area where a shift in thinking, from technician to entrepreneur, could change your trajectory
- Work out which people can best help you implement
The finish line was last month. Now is the start.