Of all the holidays celebrated around the world, a new year is likely the most celebrated regardless of faith, country, and family traditions.

You can see CNN’s around the world video here. Well, after a short ad.

Did you make resolutions, goals, or resolutions to not make goals this year?

Did you make a to-do list, a habit tracker, a code of conduct for 2025?

Personally, I give myself a lot of grace with new years. Ever since the one where I decided to break up a very long-term relationship on January 1 - something that wasn’t even in my mind on December 31st.

We I can get caught up in the hoopla and hype around new beginnings and clean slates. Sometimes it works out (the break up was a very good idea after all), and sometimes we just get frustrated with the lack of follow through (I see you 2021 resolutions).

One of my favorite Instagram accounts to follow is New Happy Co, and I love this image.

So wherever you are, however you celebrated, whatever you did or did not do… I hope you know you can start new any day. Even the ones without a 1 in them.

This is true of our fitness goals, our morning/evening routines, relationships, and yes, our business growth plans!

the Friday edition, and our team at Advisory 9 have a lot of good coming your way this year

3 tools to check out...

• Google Alerts - one of the first things I do when I work with a new client is establish Google Alerts - for the company, their products, their senior leaders, and their industry if it’s new to me. A lot of us used Google Alerts back in the day but have likely not considered them lately or have not considered how to update them.

Rebecca recorded a quick video of what Google Alerts is and how to set them up - watch the video.

• Napkin.ai has won us over this week! Ever wish you could turn text into diagrams - whether to explain something, give an additional option for intaking the information, or just skipping trying your hand in Canva? Napkin.ai may be the sidekick you’ve been looking for! As soon as it was recommended, I took it for a test drive, and had it generate both the text and the visual of one of the sections - this was 0 to this “napkin” in about 20 seconds.

See the result here.

• Milled.com - I must have been under a rock for this one. It’s not new, there’s no AI that I can see yet, and it’s still awesome. Milled is basically an archive of any newsletters it has been subscribed to.

If you’d like to check out what industry or otherwise inspiring emails are in their system, you can do so here - it’s free with some limitations.

If you’d like to add your company newsletter to their archives so it’s more easily found, you can do so here.