Your desk is covered in other people's yeses.

The computer you're staring at right now was once just an idea in someone's head. So was the software running on it. The chair supporting your weight. The building sheltering you from the cold. The phone in your pocket. The coffee cup next to your hand. Every single tangible thing in your field of vision started as a thought, and then someone decided to make it real. Someone said yes to the risk, yes to the work, yes to bringing something into existence that had never existed before.

The gap between "I have an idea" and "here's the thing I created" is always the same: someone's decision to stop thinking and start building. We live in a world built by people who decided that their ideas were worth more than their comfort, more than their fear, more than their excuses.

And we're grateful for every single one of those creators. The people who wrote the books that changed how we think. The musicians who gave us soundtracks for different seasons of our lives. The entrepreneurs who built tools that made our work possible. We need creators. We need producers. We need people who say yes to bringing things into the world.

But here's what we also know: you have something to create that someone else needs. Maybe it's a business that solves a problem you've lived through. Maybe it's a book that articulates what others are feeling but can't express. Maybe it's a product, a service, a piece of art, a methodology. Whatever it is, it's yours to bring into existence. And the world is missing it because you haven't said yes yet.

And you need it, too. Not because creating will make you more successful or productive or impressive. But because humans are creators and producers by nature. It's how we express what's inside us. It's how we make sense of the world. It's how we leave our mark.

When you suppress that creative impulse, when you only consume what others have made, something essential starts to atrophy. We're not meant to be passive observers of other people's creations. We're meant to add our voice, our vision, our unique contribution to the world. That's not optional. That's fundamental to being fully alive.

Here's something we wish someone had told us twenty years ago: Nobody cares about your ideas. Not your brilliant business concept that's going to disrupt an entire industry. Not your revolutionary app that's going to change how people communicate. Not your game-changing framework that's going to transform how people think. Ideas, by themselves, are worth exactly zero dollars until someone makes them tangible. And the person with the mediocre idea who actually builds something will win every single time, because execution is the only currency that matters in the real world.

That entrepreneur you admire, the one who's building the business you wish you'd started? Their idea probably wasn't better than yours. But they said yes when the opportunity came. That author whose book is saying everything you've been thinking? They just sat down and wrote it.

It's the bedtime story you skipped because you were exhausted. Your kid asked you to read to them, and you said "tomorrow, I promise." But tomorrow you said it again. And now they've stopped asking. That window closed. They're not four anymore. They're seven. And you can't go back.

It's the trip you postponed with your aging parent until "things settle down." But things never settled. And now they can't travel anymore. That trip will never happen.

It's the love letter you never wrote because it felt too vulnerable. And now you're lying in bed next to someone who feels like a stranger because you spent years choosing safety over truth.

And in business the cost is just as real:

It's the client who was ready to work with you, but you said "let me get back to you after I finalize my offer." They hired someone else. Not because that person was better - because that person said yes. That entire branch of possibility - the revenue, the referrals, the testimonials - gone.

It's the product you spent eighteen months perfecting before launch. And in those eighteen months, three competitors launched, failed, iterated, and figured out what the market actually wanted. They're on version 3.0 while you're still on 0.0. Those eighteen months of revenue? Gone. The market position you could have owned…someone else owns it now.

These aren't hypotheticals. These are the actual costs. The moments that don't come back. The connections that atrophy. The opportunities that move on.

And why it’s so hard to grasp? Because these losses are invisible. Your spouse doesn't say "you just missed a moment where I was going to share something that would have brought us closer." Your kid doesn't tell you "I've stopped expecting you to be fully present." The market doesn't send you an email saying "this window just closed."

The cost of "maybe later" is paid in moments you didn't even know you were losing. In relationships that quietly hollowed out. In opportunities that silently passed by.

But the most important takeaway from the missed opportunities of “maybe later” are the priceless opportunities you get to intentionally create in your life.

There's a line from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged that's been rattling around in our heads:

We have the power to choose, but we don't get to escape choosing. Because not choosing is still a choice. Saying "I'll do it when I have more time" is choosing to stay exactly where we are. Saying "I need to think about it more" is choosing delay over action. Saying "I'm not ready yet" is choosing fear over possibility. Every single decision we make - including the ones we're actively avoiding - is putting our lives on a different trajectory.

Most of us think of big decisions as the ones that matter. The career change. The marriage. The move to a new city. But that's not how life actually works. Our lives are being shaped by the thousand small decisions we make every single day, the ones that feel so insignificant we don't even register them as choices. That email we didn't send this morning because we wanted to think about it more? Trajectory shift. But along those same lines, the email we did send this morning is also a trajectory shift. That conversation we walked away from because it felt uncomfortable? Trajectory shift. That conversation we didn’t walk away from, even though it was uncomfortable? Trajectory shift.

Pay attention to trajectory shifts and make sure you are on the one you want to be on! Where you currently stand is nowhere near as important as the trajectory you are on.

Every choice, no matter how small, is moving us either toward the life we actually want or away from it. There is no standing still. There is no neutral. We're always choosing a direction, whether we realize it or not.

Our current life is a perfect reflection of the choices we've been making. Our bank account right now is a direct result of every financial decision we've made, every risk we took or didn't take, every opportunity we said yes or no to. Our body right now is the sum total of every health choice we've made. Our relationships right now are the result of every boundary we set or didn't set, every conversation we had or avoided. Our world is a mirror of our decision-making pattern. And if we don't like what we're seeing in that mirror…well, the mirror only changes if you do.

We're standing at January 2nd, 2026, which means we have 363 days left in this year. That's 363 opportunities to shift our trajectory, 363 chances to choose differently than we chose yesterday or last week or last year.

And we can tell you what happens for most of us, because we've lived this pattern ourselves. We spend those 363 days exactly the same way we spent 2025. We make the same excuses about timing and readiness. We avoid the same difficult conversations. We delay the same decisions we've been delaying for years. We keep collecting information and insights, keep preparing and planning, keep telling ourselves we're "almost ready" to make a move.

And then we get to December 31st, 2026, and we look back at another year that passed without anything meaningful changing. We feel that familiar mixture of disappointment and confusion, wondering why nothing's different despite all the books we read and all the courses we took and all the insights we collected. But deep down, where we don't let ourselves look too closely, we know exactly why. Because it’s what we chose.

Speaking of people who are done waiting - our friends Eileen Wilder, Brooke Giroux, and Keely Stawicki are running Scale Your Authority next week (January 8-10). It's for entrepreneurs exhausted from posting constantly, creating offers that don't convert, and working their butts off for a paycheck that doesn't match the effort. They're teaching what actually works: Facebook ads that create demand, funnels that convert, and how to sell high-ticket without being weird about it. Bart will also be speaking at it!

This is exactly the kind of yes that shifts trajectories. Not someday. Next week. The entrepreneurs scaling faster didn't wait until they felt ready. They took action and figured it out along the way. That's always how it works.

Grab your ticket at https://bit.ly/47qzGYG.

It's January 2nd, 2026. We have 363 more days ahead of us. That's 363 more chances to shift our trajectory, to choose action over preparation, to say yes instead of maybe later.

Most of us will drift through those days. We'll delay the decisions we need to make. We'll avoid the conversations we need to have. We'll prepare for the action we never quite get around to taking. And then we'll get to December 31st and realize that another year passed, and we're standing in exactly the same place we were standing twelve months ago. Just older. Just more tired. Just more aware of how much time has passed.

But here's what we also know: we have the power to choose differently, starting right now. Not because it's a new year and new years are supposed to be magical times of transformation. But because we're here, feeling that gap between where we are and where we could be. And that gap is telling us something important: we're capable of more than we're currently choosing.

Every single tangible thing that exists in this world - every building, every business, every book, every breakthrough - was created by someone who said yes. Someone who stopped preparing and started building. Someone who chose action over comfort, risk over safety, now over someday.

Why not us? Why not today?