A Note from Jim Greatorex: January 2025

Published in Home Modifications on January 21, 2025

Jim’s January Tidbits

Happy New Year everyone!

When the new year rolls around, I like how it’s naturally a time for everyone to reboot. For me, it’s the time to take a fresh approach to my personal life and my career. What about last year went well, and where could I make improvements? Put some written goals in place where everyone can see them. I learned in a Sandler sales class several years ago that if you don’t write down your goals and post them where others can see them, they truly aren’t goals; they are only dreams. There are two reasons why it’s important to write down your goals and post them where you can see them. When you see them every day, they stay top of mind, and you are likely to continue to pursue them and be motivated to achieve them and not forget about them before February hits. Instead of you posting them where only you can see them, try posting them where your co-workers and family can see them. You will be surprised as to what happens next.

When I learned about this method of written goals, I decided to implement it in my company Black Bear Medical in Maine. For the last five years I owned the company, during our first staff meeting of the year I made each employee write down a personal goal and a professional goal for the year. They each had to share with the rest of the staff what those goals were. We then asked them to post those goals in their workspace or the staff meeting room where they, and others, could see them. The results were better than I expected for everyone, me included.

First of all, the goals had to be measurable or have a definitive result. The goal couldn’t be you want to lose some weight; it had to be that you wanted to lose ten pounds so it could be measured. Professional goals could be things like learning a new skill or achieving a sales or team goal.

Once one puts their goals out in the open like that, it creates an internal higher motivation to achieve the goal and causes you to think a little bit deeper about presenting a meaningful goal if everyone else will know about it. The other benefit to doing this is that it creates a better home or work environment. When you learn about things that are important to your family and friends at work, you find commonalities that you might not have known about your co-workers and people will start cheering each other on. The whole group became closer as a result, and many lunchtime conversations turned into goal update discussions. One employee stated that his goal was to run a marathon, and little did he know that another person also had that goal. They ended up training together and became close friends and both ran the marathon!

Personally, I usually ended up with three or four personal goals and one or two professional goals. I remember when thinking about my personal goals that I had great friends from my younger adult life that I fell out of contact with. I wrote down their names and posted them where I could see them, and every year I would remember to make the effort to reach out and reconnect. It was always something that I was thrilled with and proud that I did. If I hadn’t written it down, had it where I could see it often and proclaimed it to my work colleagues, I never would have remembered or taken the time to reach out.

Last year I felt like I was so busy that I didn’t take the time to write out clear goals and just went with the flow, and I regret it. I recently heard a speaker talk about making positive changes, and he stated how important it is to make goals of positive change in your life, but you have to be intentional in your actions in order to achieve it. Many of us think of bettering ourselves when the new year hits but forget about our goals by January 15 and relive the same year over and over. Some of us have been reliving the same year over and over for the last ten years! Do you want to be a better leader? A better parent? A better partner to your spouse? A better son or daughter? A better friend? A better employee? Drink less? Lose weight? Meet that sales goal? Go skydiving? I encourage you to write down measurable goals and share them with the appropriate people, keep them where you can see them often, and see if achieving your goals doesn’t bring you much joy and fulfillment.

I am going to make 2025 intentional. How about you?

I want to thank all Live at Home members for your membership and support. It’s a great privilege for us at VGM Live at Home to work every day to bring you value and tools to help you serve your clients well. The passion you bring to serving your clients is something that we greatly admire. Let’s have a great 2025!

Jim Greatorex
VGM Live at Home

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