Tell me about your New Year's Resolutions

It’s great to be back in New York and I’m here for 12 days. I hope you all had a great New Year’s celebration.  

Like most people, I always like to make an attempt to make some New Year’s resolutions.  This is probably the first time in 30 years that I’ve not had a New Year’s resolution to diet as I’ve managed to crack that one.  After 25 years of being a heavy smoker, I’ve already cracked that one too. Also, my drinking is also under control! So it’s a real problem to know what’s left.  So here goes my short list of five resolutions for you:

1. My book, that is available on Amazon (but I know is really not good enough), needs rewriting so whilst I’d be happy of any of you buy it, I’m giving myself 6 months to rewrite it.  If you’d like to know what it’s about just Google 'Larry Gould, author.'
2. I’ve got the most brilliant PAs working with me therefore it’s easy for me to just dictate emails quickly.  However I think there’s too much emailing done, so now I’m going to talk to people.
3. When on holiday with my wife, or even at home, I’m going to stop going into the bathroom and looking at my emails in the middle of the night.  Instead, I’m going to turn off when I go to bed – this is a really hard one.
4. Because I spend so much time travelling, when I’m in America I tend to put on a posh British accent. This is partly to avoid talking in an American accent but frankly, after a few ‘awfully nices’ and ‘absolutely delightfuls’ and ‘oh gosh’ I do get a response about my English accent.  On the other side, when in England, I’m going to stop ‘figuring things out,’saying ‘I reckon,’‘reaching out’ or 'circling back.’
5. Meetings meetings meetings!  Of course, meetings are absolutely necessary but the length and number or them tend to get out of hand so I am planning to reduce my meetings by 50% and the length of the meetings by 50% too. 

On a more serious note, I frequently talk about our technology and processes, which are absolutely essential in our business, but sometimes this focus takes away time from the customer experience.  My main focus/resolution this year therefore is to ensure that thebigword and our teams provide the best customer experience possible.  That doesn’t mean giving our services away for nothing, it means providing a world class service for a competitive price.  I promise every 3 months to give an update on how my resolutions are going and I’d be interested in knowing how yours are going too.

Have a great week,

Larry