My, How You’ve Grown!

Like most, my holiday season is full of fantastic food, hectic traveling, and wonderful new memories. Even though it’s cold outside there’s a warmth surrounding this time of year as everyone starts to focus a little more on the important things in life. For those who are blessed with large families, holidays are usually times we set aside all the normal excuses and gather together, often being the only time of year we’re all in one spot. And when you only see a group of people once per year, there’s a lot of catching up to do, and heaven forbid you miss a year!

Our lives can move and change so fast, especially so if you live far away like me and aren’t in the daily loop, these infrequent family gatherings almost require getting to know aunts, uncles, and cousins all over again. So, when friends and relatives see my kids magically jump from babies to toddlers with only Facebook photos in between, I expect there to be some shock at how much they’ve changed. “My goodness, they’ve gotten so big!” I love to brag on my kids, talk about things they’ve learned, and share their funny stories… but inevitably the conversation eventually turns to what’s new in my life. I set the over/under on how many times I’ll answer the question, “How’s work been going?” between now and the end of the year at 40, and every time it makes me wince.

Maybe I’m too introspective; I realize most questions like this are just a polite formality, but every single time I answer with a canned response like, “It’s going pretty good…” I cringe a little. Why? I’m not lying. Things at work are going well. I’m blessed with a great job at Hudson,Ink and I work with great people. Contractor marketing has been stable through some unpredictable times. It’s provided for my family, and I truly love being able to help people succeed in their businesses. So, why the cringe? Well, I can’t help but think back to when I was asked that question the year before when I timidly gave the same answer. And quite bluntly, I think we’re all shooting for more than just doing “pretty good.”

If you’ve put roughly 2,000 hours of your life into a job over the last year, wouldn’t you hope you had at least moved the needle from “pretty good” to something to be a little more excited about? Maybe it’s unrealistic, but I hope when people haven’t seen me for a long stretch the next time they do they can clearly observe a steadily improving difference in my lifestyle, my overall happiness, time I’m able to spend with my family, etc. that it’s almost as obvious as the physical growth they see in my kids. And as much as we want to run straight to the excuses for why we remain stuck in our same old rut, far more of that potential is under our control than we care to admit.

We’ll soon be closing this year out and entering into January with big plans to make this year different, but most of those resolutions lack much resolve and don’t last through the first month. Didn’t you make a pretty similar promise to yourself this time last year? Sometimes we show up on a random Monday determined to make this week different, but we throw our hands up by lunchtime. What is it that continually throws us off track and makes us settle into accepting a “pretty good” lifestyle when so much more is out there in return for our hard work?

Where were you in December of 2020? Have you seen the growth and improvement you wanted since last year? Growth that makes people take notice? And if the answer is no, what has kept that from happening? A good plan for success? Consistency and accountability? Good help to delegate to? Hudson,Ink can offer all of that in spades.

I have a goal for this year to help some motivated contractors reach a level of success they thought wouldn’t be possible, and here’s where it starts. We’re offering free marketing assessments and 2022 plans to the first 30 contractors that email the word ASSESSMENT to [email protected]. We will give you a free consultation call to better understand your business’ specific needs and challenges, then put together a proposal for what your 2022 growth track could look like. Zero obligation, and this regularly $279 value is completely free. If you like the plan and would like some help implementing it, we can go to work from there. If you don’t want to proceed, then we’ll part ways as friends.

My goal by next Thanksgiving is to be helping more contractors flourish and have some new success stories for Hudson,Ink to brag about. And your goal (if I may be so bold as to guess) is to be more profitable with less stress than ever before. Let’s achieve those goals together. Change starts here.