Happy New Year! 

A Few Words from Jim

January 2024

Happy New Year! 

2024 is off to a great start. 

I had the opportunity to have an amazing lunch at the Twisted Cork in Grants Pass with Trever Yarrish and he shared with me his end of year ritual when I asked him what he did to celebrate the year end. As expected, it’s full of insight.

He writes down what he remembers. He looks at all the photos he took throughout the year with his wife and children on the big screen at home. They discuss each photo and it helps him realize how many things he did not remember. Then he looks at his schedule. What he intentionally put on his calendar. This retrospective process he goes through seems very useful and deep and I want to try it monthly in 2024. 

He also gives himself 15 minutes of dedicated focused time to create 3 lists. 

What do I want to start doing this year?

What do I want to stop doing this year?

What do I want to continue to do this year?

He also asks himself what a perfect Tuesday looks like and what he would do if he knew he could not fail as well as what he would do even though he knows that he will fail. 

I love my lunches with Trever. The man is a fountain of inspiration. 

What are your goals for 2024?

This issue marks one of mine. I wanted to write more so I wrote three of the stories inside. 

One is a very fast and deep interview with Southern Oregon University’s President Rick Bailey. I call it a master class in leadership. I got so much out of my 30 minutes with him that I can’t stop thinking about it. 

Another is a wandering reflection on the process we went through at one of our companies when we stopped providing a core service that we have provided for decades, CABLE TV. It was a loss leader for far too long and I wanted to share some insight on our process with hopes that if you are holding onto a loss leader you can find a way to move away from it. 

The final story is about the new Apple Vision Pro launch date (February 2nd) and sharing with you that yes we are getting one (or more) and yes we are writing something for the new platform and it’s been hard to do without having one and without seeing what everyone else is doing as well. 

Let me know your thoughts on my stories and check out our guest posts from Lisa Manyon, Greg Henderson, Marshal Doak and new in 2024, Jason Schneider from Civic* Possible. 

Happy New Year. I’m wishing you a year of good!

Thanks for reading…

 Jim
Jim@SouthernOregonBusiness.com