My 2024 Year in Review – What Now? – Personal Development

AI, Articles, Assessments and Behaviors, CRM, Hiring, Personal, Selling, Social Selling, , ,

While my 2024 on a personal level was less than stellar (awful heat, area fires, & injuries), my business overall was pretty good. However, take away one large contract, and it was mediocre at best. What will 2025 look like? It will need to at least match my 2024 results in order to make it worth my time.

I’d be happy with this year’s dollar total. 2025 will be all about personal development. Full disclosure. I have been in a varying state of semi-retirement for close to 20 years now. I only work as needed and it is not even close to what would be considered as part-time.

At 71, I still work for five reasons only …

  1. For fun. It’s more of a hobby for me rather than work.
  2. For my clients who I love!
  3. To keep my mind active and engaged. To learn new things.
  4. I love new challenges!
  5. I still suck at playing guitar and my time to become a Rock God has slipped past me.

Whatever money I make funds my toys and I’m running out of toys to buy and the space to keep them. While I don’t need the money, I will draw the line at losing money. I’m willing to risk that for one year, but not for two. Therefore, looking ahead, some stuff’s gotta’ change. If it doesn’t, 2025 may be my last ride. If that happens, I’m going to need a new hobby.

2024 was totally atypical for me. One large contract and very few new clients. However, I made up for that with additional support for existing clients. What I need is new clients, existing clients, and another good hit and I’m going to be taking a multi-point approach to all three.

I have spent the last three months studying marketing and AI in preparation. These are two areas where I have had no, zero, experience with. For that matter, I haven’t even had much interest, if any, in the two. While I have been drinking the AI Kool Aid for a few months now (tastes great!), I still hate marketing. #sacrifices

I will be focused on  …

  1. Verticals and Ideal Clients – I have identified my target markets.
  2. Attraction – Get better at social.
  3. More Referrals – This will include “power partners”.
  4. New Offerings – Read on.

Let’s look at each …

Verticals and Ideal Clients

I’m looking for solopreneurs and small sales teams. I will also renew focus on the industry that I know best … custom signage. All of my offerings relate well to this business sector. Custom signage is custom manufacturing and, from experience, the processes are all very similar so … add that to the mix.

Attraction

This past October I joined a Mastermind Group that is operated by one of my long-time friends and mentors Neal Schaffer. I used to write for a site that Neal operated and he is a recognized expert on marketing and now AI. See Neal’s books on Amazon!

This association has been instrumental in introducing me to both of these arenas where my skills have been, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. My social attraction game has already improved dramatically.

Neal’s digital marketing framework is based on what he calls SES (Search, Email, Social). I am working on search and social. At the same time, Nimble has increased their emailing functionalities to include things like message sequencing. Emailing at scale is now rolling out so, once fully released, I can get going on that. I have failed at email marketing more than once.

More Referrals

While I’m very good at earning referrals, I’m flat out terrible about asking for them. Still, I know the steps. In the sign business, I worked almost exclusively on referrals. I’m kicking myself in the ass for my shortcomings in this area! This will be corrected and fast.

I’m honestly better at developing referral relationships in person vs. online. I need to fix that and align myself with individuals who I am comfortable with referring to and them with me. I call these power partners and traditionally they are folks where we do not compete with each other yet … we are both calling on the same target market.

I developed and owned for-profit networking groups in the past. The membership in these groups was based on this power partner model. Perhaps I can replicate this digitally. Food for thought. 

New Offerings

Let’s start with this. It is critical for me to only offer services which can support each other. In other words, any client could benefit from any or all of my services. We can begin with that premise.

In addition to Nimble CRM, I also do sales training and pre-hire assessments which can include salesperson hiring assistance. I’m actually very good at all three, however, nobody knows about that. That would fall on me. I excel at these for the signage industry as I can also impart product knowledge along with selling skills.

I will be investing in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and I have substantially improved my LinkedIn skills in general, so I will also offer training in this area. I’ve spent the last three months up to my eyeballs in AI. Surprisingly, I have taken to this like a duck to water. I focus on leveraging AI as a sales tool so we can talk about this as well.

Here’s to 2025 or, to paraphrase the immortal words of Richard Nixon … “You won’t have Craig to kick around anymore!” 🙂

Are you thinking about a CRM? If you would like to explore whether or not Nimble CRM might be right for you, please book a free 30-minute Zoom consultation with me by going to my calendar. 

To learn more about our Nimble training and implementation services, please visit our Nimble CRM training services page.  

In addition to Nimble CRM, I also offer sales training and training on LinkedIn.

I can even assist with hiring new salespeople with initial interviews and pre-hire DISC personality assessments.  

I would also be happy to connect you to managed I.T. and telephony services or to a marketing professional who I know and trust. Please reach out to me at craig@adaptive-business.com for an introduction!

Craig M. Jamieson

Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!
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