2019 Word of the Year

Each year, I choose a word to guide my path and to act as a north star through the year. Recently, I've also begun to use a guiding color for each year. Last year my word was magic and my color was purple.

For 2019, the word came slowly, and was guided by color. When I began to consider words back in the fall, I first thought about harmony, and then growth. Both felt close, but not quite right. I also wondered whether I wasn't quite finished with magic. Then I started to feel a pull toward the color green, which then led me to the word abundance. I immediately knew in my gut that this was the right word for 2019 and the right color.

One of the first things I did in preparation was to look through my favorite podcasts to see if there were any episodes focusing on abundance. Listening to The Priestess Podcast episode 30, Denise Duffield-Thomas on Manifesting Abundance, gave me a five-step path to work with the concept of abundance in my business. Here's a general guide of how I plan to use the word abundance with Yardia throughout the year:

• Mindset
• Take inventory of my product line and decide what to let go or discontinue.
• Take inventory of my business practices and decide what's working and what to let go.
• Declutter my home studio.

• Double my revenue.
• Triple my profit.
• Save 20% of salary for retirement.

• Surround myself with greenery and growth.
• Feel abundant with what I have now: surround myself with what makes me feel like a boss.
• Organize studio for efficiency and sales, including restructuring my shipping and inventory spaces.

• Reach out to wholesale retailers.
• Participate in local markets at least twice a month.
• Seek opportunities to grow presence through marketing and partnerships.
• Create four collections of new products.

• Travel: to take in creative inspiration.
• Learn: study areas of interest including licensing and other revenue streams, learn from books and podcasts about goal.
• Practice gratitude: give thanks to customers, retailers, and business friends.

For each of these steps, I'll create specific actions that I can get started on right now to make my goals practical. For example, to be able to participate in more local markets, I'll need to purchase a pop-up tent so that I can take advantage of weekly outdoor markets, instead of limiting myself to indoor craft shows. To decide what to let go, I'll analyze my sales stats and remove any slow or stagnant selling products from my online shops.

I know that each of these steps will help me to reach my specific business goals because it's worked for me in the past. I'm excited to begin the journey of abundance in 2019!