NY Resolution No. 8: Pitch Past & Present

Lads and ladies, especially peeps of commerce, let's toast to No. 8 on the much-loved HETLoR - 2025 Honest ET List of Resolutions - the most bulletproof of all New Year resolutions: always hark back to the glorious past while simultaneously pitching a glorious future. That way, the present - this quarter, and probably the next many - is a swamp of losses, broken supply chains, and PowerPoint decks that look like crumpled Post-its in the bin.

Consider the genius of nostalgia. When your balance sheet resembles a standard north Indian railway station during the festival season, simply invoke a golden age, any golden age, the more distant the better. Instantly, shareholders are lulled into a warm bath of retro reassurance of mythological proportions. Then pivot - hard - into the future. Announce that by 2030, your company will colonise Mars, reinvent sambhar and monetise the concept of 'vibes'. Investors adore a visionary who can lose money today but guarantee utopia tomorrow. The present, meanwhile, is treated like a suspicious relative at a wedding: acknowledged briefly, then ignored. This is the brilliance of the resolution - it's a two-pronged strategy of temporal misdirection. Past glory, future grandeur, present irrelevance. So, as the champagne corks fly, remember: business failure is not a tragedy, it's a narrative opportunity. Merry Christmas!