I like to plan for the next year toward the end of October.
Yep. You might think that’s a little early, but after being in business for over seven years now, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that November and December and the first week of January are going to fly by, and I’m going to be in mid-January wondering what I even want to accomplish in 2024.
And I don’t like that feeling.
About five years ago, I started doing my annual business planning strategy at the end of October. And then, I follow up to review the goals I’ve set to make sure it’s still the direction I want to go during my downtime between Christmas and New Year’s Day when I don’t work at all.
And this works well for me. Which means very soon, I’m going to spend some time ruminating on what I’d like to accomplish in 2024 and then parcel those goals out throughout the year.
But now that this is on my mind (and because I just put it in Asana as a task 🤪), it’s making me think about my word of the year for 2023 (and I guess 2024!).
Friend. Will you believe I didn’t pick a word for 2023 until May of 2023?
It’s true. I was sick from mid-November of 2022 through June over and over (and over and over and over) again, and then I got mono mid-August which laid me out for weeks. The longest stretch of days (in a row) that I was healthy this year was 15, and that only happened a few times.
Can you even imagine?
I’m shuddering even thinking of what will happen this fall and winter now that all of my kids are in school (aka Germ City), and it’s my youngest child’s first experience out of my house (no daycare, preschool, etc.) I’m about ready to sage my house and keep my fingers crossed until next spring.
But that side story wasn’t the point of this email, was it? Let’s get back to talking about this year’s word and why it’s on my mind.
In May, when I realized for the 2,094,896th time that I hadn’t chosen a word—after doing this consistently since at least 2011—I thought I’d pick “survive” and run with it. Because that is what I had been doing, surviving. But coming from the point of feeling so bad, the word survive didn’t hold any positivity. It felt more like I was choosing to honor the minimum I was able to accomplish, and not encourage me or motivate me or celebrate all that was to come.
And as a born-and-bred city girl (that lives in a small town), I kept thinking of a flower that grows in the cracks of a sidewalk against all odds. I felt like that flower.
You see, as much as I could complain about how hard it was for me personally and professionally all year, I’m still pretty freaking proud of what I’d accomplished. I killed it with my podcast (SHOUT OUT, TALK COPY TO ME! 🎉). I worked with the loveliest clients of all time on some of the coolest projects, and I launched a few new courses: Perfect Podcast Promo, Wow-Worthy Podcast Workflows, WTFaqs!, and Blogging Foundations, all while having a handful more courses/products in the works.
I didn’t think that surviving was the right term for what me or my little imagined sidewalk flower experienced.
To me, the flower thrived, it didn’t survive. For a seed to germinate without space, without the proper conditions, and then grow without being trampled by feet, that was thriving.
So in May, I chose my word for this year: Thrive.
And so far, I have been as best as I possibly could.
I’m glad I didn’t skip tradition and forgo picking a word of the year when all felt doom-and-gloomy in the beginning of the year. So cheers to thriving 🎉 I’m keeping my fingers crossed I’ll find a word I like just as much for 2024.
Post update: Curious what the entire 2023 was like for my business? Here’s my annual reflection on life as a solopreneur in 2023.
