Brian’s 2025 Vision Statement

So Happy New Year to you , and I'm recording this on the last day of 2024 , as I'm the last one in my office Today cleaning up the office a little bit , put up my new year-long calendar for 2025 , taking a look in QuickBooks , looking at our year-end revenue and profit , and it's been an amazing year .

So we hit in both verticals within 2% of our revenue goals , which were set back in January of 2024 . So that's awesome . They say you can't predict revenue in a personal injury firm , and I say bullshit .

If you get it right , you absolutely can predict revenue , and I'll do an episode in the coming weeks about exactly how we did that and exactly how we're doing it for 2025 .

But I'm just looking back at new cases in how long it's taken cases to go through the system , all of the things that you ought to be doing at the end of the year as you prepare for the next year , and we're coming up in 16 days now on our two-day annual retreat with the law firm leadership team . That's going to be January 15th and 16th .

We get a house together , we bring in our EOS implementer and we spend really 48 hours drilling deep on . What problems do we have , what opportunities do you have to solve ? And this is the first year in five years where we really are not knock on wood . We are not coming into this leadership retreat with problems , which is amazing .

Historically , we've had people problems , we've had lead problems , we've had conversion problems , we've had lead problems , we've had conversion problems , we've had cash flow problems , and this year everything again knock on wood has been really good .

The team is great , our marketing is doing amazing , we have a great new intake person Not new anymore , but a great intake person new this year who is really doing a great job of selling the firm . And then production has been really good .

Production has been a strong suit of ours for a couple of years now , and now we've got enough cases coming through the pipeline that it's really starting to shine .

And so this year , as we get ready for this leadership retreat , it's really about what opportunities exist for us to expand and to continue to make our lives better and our employees' lives better and our clients' lives better , and not what problems do we need to solve where this whole thing might crash and burn .

So it's just a fun space to be in , and the thing that I did this year this is the first year that I've done this to get ready for that retreat is I went to ChatsGPT and I'm going to walk you in this episode through a framework that I use with ChatGPT to help me write a set of annual goals and a vision statement for the year .

So here's the first thing that I should let you know is that I'm not a great prompt engineer . I'm not a ChatGPT nerd . I haven't built my own GPTs . I use it really as a thought partner . Hey , here's a thought that I have . That's half formed , with two examples . Can you give me three more examples that I might be able to use ?

So that's how I use chat GPT , and so here's the prompt that I gave it . Hey , I would like you to help me set some 2025 goals and craft a vision statement , and over the next couple of days , I want you to ask me 10 questions that will help you do this . What other instructions do you need before we get started ?

That's a tip that I picked up somewhere along the way is asking it what other clarification or instructions it needs before it can really help you do what you want to do . So it says to me I need to know focus areas , time horizon Do you like big , bold goals or do you want a mix of ambitious and also incremental targets ?

What statement tone do you want this thing to have ? And then , are there non-negotiables or constraints that I should keep in mind ? So all of that is really helpful . Then I gave it some answers and then it just dove into the questions . The other thing I asked it is hey , I'd like to be able to devote some time and some thought to these questions .

Does it make sense for you to give me all 10 of the questions and I can spend the day going back and forth answering them and I'll get you all 10 , and then you like spit the thing out and I said , no , these they do build on each other , and so if you can give me answers , I can prompt you to the next question .

So that's really helpful , and I don't know whether that's as I'm sitting here . I'm like man . The robot really helped me out with that . I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing , or the right way to do it or the wrong way , but that's the way that my little GPT wanted to do it , so that's what we went with .

And the thing is that , with these questions , like you could do all this on your own and I was not blown away by the vision statement and the goals .

It's not really anything I wouldn't have come up with on my own , but the process framework of walking through the questions and of you then taking time to answer the questions in a way that I think you would if you had an executive coach or law firm coach . It's the same thing Now .

It doesn't have all of the nuance , it doesn't understand everything about running a law firm and it doesn't ask great follow-up questions at least not in this sequence . But just the process of you sitting down and thinking through the answers to these questions will help you , if not set better goals , at least clarify in your mind what is important and what's not .

And you go ah , maybe there were some things that I should have been thinking about . So I'll just generally go through the questions that it asked me and then I'll read you my vision statement and I'll tell you the question that it asked me at the very end , which left me insulted .

You'll get a feel for how I go back and forth with ChatGPT and how I use it . If you are a power user , like you're probably not going to be impressed with this . If you are a very light user of chat GPT , this is a way that you can get a little bit better at it .

First things first , it asked me , in business , family and travel , what would you say if you were looking back on 2025 and said this was the best year ever ? Next thing it asked me is an internal reflection question which habits , routines and behaviors have led you to your biggest wins over the years ?

Which patterns and obstacles have repeatedly held you back or have not served you ? And that is worth like 25 minutes of your time . What are the things that I want to leave behind in 2024 , that have not served me , that I do not want to carry with me into 2025 ? Third question ask me a question that my coach , sammy Chong , asks all the time .

If you could wave a magic wand and instantly change one thing about your business , about your family life and about your personal habits , what would they be ? And the beautiful thing about this question is you have a magic wand and you don't have to think through how would I do that ?

Or you don't have the obstacles and the mental barriers to coming to that solution or coming to that result . You just have to say what result you want it to be . Next question what does your ideal day look like in 2025 ? And again , if you've never sat down and put pen to paper on what your ideal day looks like , this is a worthwhile exercise , right ?

So for me it's get up around 5 , have some coffee , either go to the gym or run or walk or do some kind of workout from 6 to 7 . I don't currently have a sauna and I do have a cold plums that I don't use as often as I should , but my ideal day would be incorporating one or both of those things in the morning , get the kids off to school

. Get to work sometime around 9.30 . At work , not dealing with any day-to-day lawyer nonsense , only solving problems at the six-figure case level and above . That means I'm rarely the lead lawyer on any given case and my role really is to make sure that our marketing and our sales processes are humming and that our cases are working their way through the system .

I told that I want a high protein lunch around noon , and in the afternoon we create some content either do law firm marketing or record a podcast like this , either on my show or on other people's shows and then at four o'clock I leave to go coach baseball or soccer for my kids' teams .

I'm going to have dinner together with the family every night that we can . When we don't have practices . Kids go to bed at eight and then I want to spend some time with Krista until we go to bed , maybe an hour or two after that . I don't know . I don't know . That's probably not your ideal day . That's about my ideal work day .

Then we got some questions about what are the biggest opportunities that you see coming down the pipe in 2025 ? What are the biggest risks and challenges on the other side that you see coming in 2025 ?

And when you think about the 2025 goals that you've told me about , like the three high priority things in each category of your life , which is the one that feels like the biggest stretch and which is the one that excites you and makes you a little bit nervous ?

And for me , those two are different , right , the one that feels like it would be the hardest to achieve is not the one that makes me a little bit nervous . Finally , if you had to summarize your purpose or mission for 2025 , like in one bold sentence , what would it be ? And then , last question imagine it's December 31st 2025 .

You're celebrating an incredible year . What are you most proud of ? What moments or milestones stand out to you as the highlights of the year ? Which really is another way of asking the very first question , which was what three specific accomplishments in business , family and travel would make you say that this is the best year ever ?

So it took all 10 of those data points and and it said okay , I'm gonna start crafting . I said no , no . Before you do that , do you need any other feedback or is there anything that needs amplification ? And we clarified a couple of details in a couple of categories , and then it gave me this 2025 vision statement .

In 2025 , I will live a life of no regrets , maximizing every opportunity in business , family , health and travel . During this small 365-day window of time , I will focus on the highest value tasks in my business , ensuring growth and profitability while maintaining a clear boundary between work and home life .

My family will thrive in an environment of presence , connection and intentional support . I will prioritize my health , becoming physically fit , mentally sharp and emotionally balanced .

Our financial future will be secure , allowing us to give generously , live lavishly and plan boldly for the future , and this year we'll set a foundation for a life filled with freedom , fulfillment and impact . Pretty cool A lot of platitudes , pretty vague Definitely not the way that I would encourage people to set goals , but it works as a vision statement .

It works as a simple put this in the beginning of your notebook or your journal and look at this once a day . Right , it works as a mantra . It doesn't work , actually , as goal setting , and it gave me then 10 big , bold goals in each category , which is probably too many . In business , family travel , like that's probably 10 in each is too many .

Now you have at least 30 goals that you're trying to hit in a 52 week time span , so I didn't love that and then I made a mistake . Then I asked Chet GPT , which you should do this , but it will make you feel bad .

I asked it now that we've gone through the whole 2025 goal planning and vision exercise and based on everything else that you know about me from whatever you have in the memory bank from questions that I've asked you before . What blind spots do you observe and what opportunities do you think exist that I'm not thinking of ? And it gave me a bunch .

It gave me some reasonably good tactical stuff and then it said , hey , here's a question you ought to ask yourself regularly , brian Am I thinking big enough or am I just improving what already exists ?

And honestly , that's something that I've struggled with in the last year or two , because I'm pretty happy with what already exists and if it improves , amazing , if it stays the same , that's pretty good .

And I don't think that I'm in a space , with the three kids and the two businesses and a happy marriage , where I'm really interested in blowing up and thinking of

something bigger . So I said to Chachi PT if I were to think a little bit bigger , what would you suggest as a larger goal ? To me ? Some of these were really big , but it set really , I thought , incremental goals . It took the revenue of the law firm and it increased it . It took the goal revenue of great legal marketing and it increased it .

So launch a book that becomes an industry standard . We already did that , just didn't know about it . It suggested that I take a full year and live abroad . We're taking a month next year and living abroad , so I don't know . 12 is 12x . I guess that's not an incremental gain .

It told me to become an amateur endurance athlete , which I don't think I have the time and the hours for right now and it probably would just piss off my wife .

And then it suggested that I should try to build a hundred million dollar net worth by age 50 , which , like amazing , that definitely would be a big , big , hairy , audacious goal , as they say , but not really something I'm terribly interested in tilting , at least not right now .

And this , I think , is important to figuring out where you are and what's important , and whether you're in a season of your life where the big , hairy , audacious game changing goal is important , or whether you're in a season of your life where things are good and the goal is to not fuck it up .

Right now I'm in a season where things are good , the goal is to maximize this small window of time and not fuck it up , and it's a strange place to be , but it's a rotation away from satisfying maybe some of the lower needs on Maslow's hierarchy to really getting into self-actualization , like how can I make everybody else on the team better ?

How can I spread the influence ? Things like that . So that's what I'm thinking about as we go into 2025 . I'll do an episode in a couple of weeks on exactly what we're doing at our annual retreat in terms of the law firm goals . I really do like this podcast as a platform to shoot my shot and call my shot , shoot my shot , stake my shot .

I don't know to say what we're going to do and then put that out there into the universe and follow up and try to hit the goal . So 2024 was our best year ever . We're going to try to top that again in 2025 . I hope that you are having a similar experience . If you're not , I'd love to help you .

And so if you are struggling , if you are trying to get your law firm off the ground certainly if you're trying to crest your law firm over the million dollar mark so that you can free up more of your time , hire people to do the kinds of things that you don't want to do and you're not great at , that's exactly what we do in creative marketing .

And so if you are in that position where you're like somewhere shy of a million dollars and you want the recipe to go from there to $4 million within a couple of years . I've got it , so reach out to me and I will be happy to do a consultation with you and see if one of our programs is right for you .

Otherwise , have a happy new year and we'll talk to you in 2025 .