We hope that each of you had a very special and enjoyable holiday season and that you were able to spend quality time with your friends and family.
One of the best things about year-end is the opportunity to reflect back on the past 12 months and all that we accomplished as a firm, thanks in large part to researchers such as yourself. We began 2013 with two primary objectives:
- Establish an infrastructure that will bring in paying clients. Over the years, I have known so many great genealogists who do not have enough opportunities to apply their research expertise and experience simply because they do not have enough paying clients. Therefore, we set out this year to significantly bring more business to researchers. And, wow, did we ever succeed! It seemed with each new week, new records were set for the number of paying clients. We kept setting higher and higher sales forecasts only to break them as quickly as we set them. Thanks to you and your colleagues, thousands of clients have now achieved their research objectives, with increasing numbers being helped each day.
- Provide centralized access to the 85% of the world's documents that are not yet online. Much of this year was spent finding researchers who could access the world's document repositories. In the process, we established one of the largest professional networks of researchers in the world. Today, thanks to you and your colleagues we now have access to over 700 of the world's repositories and archives. Plus, not only can we provide lookups, but since we are professional researchers, we can search for even those hard to find records and analyze the results.
With so much progress being made, what's left to accomplish in 2014? In a single word "More." Attract more clients. Complete more projects. Access more archives. Add more specialties. We will be even more dedicated in 2014 to continuing this remarkable growth, while ensuring that our commitment to quality keeps pace with our ongoing mission of maximizing our resources and potential.
Looking back on 2013, it truly has been a remarkable year for Genealogists.com and for family history research in general. Our achievements during 2013 have set the stage for even more success in 2014. Thank you for being such an important part of the team. Thank you for your untiring commitment to producing quality deliverables. Thank you for searching every shelf, film, fiche, page and book. Thank you for all the clients you have helped. In short, thank you for helping reshape the future of family history research.
Best wishes,
Jim Heddell
Genealogists.com
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