Your financials tell you how last year went. The leader you became tells you how next year will go.

I’m a private accountant, so financial year-end genuinely excites me. But the measurement that matters most is the one almost everyone skips — and it has nothing to do with the numbers.

At year-end we naturally pull out the financials and compare ourselves to last year.

Did we increase sales? Increase profit? Reduce costs? Improve our gross profit percentage?

They’re important things to look at, and they’re the obvious things to look at.

But I want to invite you to consider another set of measurements alongside the financial ones.

What sort of leader did you become over the last 12 months? What decisions did you make that improved your business?

What boundaries did you put in place?

Did you put your prices up?

Did you hire?

Did you start saying no to non-ideal clients, and yes to more of the ideal ones?

Those are the behavioural changes that may not be showing up in your profit and loss just yet — but they’ve set you up beautifully for the year ahead.

Sometimes there’s a delay between making those improvements and seeing the results land on your P&L and balance sheet.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t count.

It just means they’re still on their way.

Check out my short video on the topic below.