Every year between shipping holiday orders and welcoming January, I take time to plan what's next for my Pacific Northwest stationery business, from both a practical perspective and from a more intuitive journaling practice.
After a steady 2024 that taught me a lot about contentment and resilience, I'm entering 2025 with a spirit of exploration and a clear sense that sometimes the best paths reveal themselves when you're willing to venture into new territory.
How a Forest Plant Became My Word of the Year
2025's word of the year, came from, appropriately, The Plant Companion Tarot. I always let my word of the year choose me in a very organic and intuitive way--I'll know it's right when it's right. I wanted my focus for the new year to be centered around curiosity, exploration, purpose and intention. I shuffled through my new Plant Companion Tarot deck and the Page of Branches card appeared. There it was – the pathfinder.
If you've ever wandered through a Pacific Northwest forest, you might have noticed Adenocaulon bicolor, the pathfinder plant. When its leaves are disturbed, they reveal their white undersides, creating winding trails for forest creatures to follow. Nature's own wayfinding system in the woods.
That's how I want to move through 2025 – to use my curiosity to seek the path that's right for me. I can serve as my own pathfinder, leading the way forward, leaving gentle markers along the way, and trusting that the path will reveal itself as I go.
Want to discover your own word of the year using tarot? Check out my step-by-step guide here.
My Big Goal for 2025
To be fully transparent, my one big dream of a goal for this year is to see The Plant Companion Tarot find its way into the hands of people who will love it as much as I do. I imagine selling out the first edition and ordering the second before the year ends.
Since I've chosen to run this business without social media, I'd love to launch this tarot deck with the support and connections of this community. If you know someone who loves plants, tarot, or both, I'd be so grateful if you'd share the tarot waitlist with them! Or if you're on social media, you are certainly welcome to share my work, even though I'm no longer present on the socials.
The Stepping Stones: My 2025 Business Goals
I've got a few more specific goals that are each in service to my longer term strategy for Yardia's future instead of standing alone as independent goals. They can be considered as stepping stones leading in the direction to what I envision for the future of Yardia.
- Grow gross revenue by 12%
- Spend more time meeting you all in person (18 days of markets and events, an addition of 6 days)
- Streamline the product line and sell through discontinued items
- Reach out to 1000 potential new stores for wholesale
What's Coming in 2025
Somehow I've already got part of my holiday collection ready to go--I've never been so prepared in advance! Here are a few more exciting things already lined up:
- Two new collections inspired by The Plant Companion Tarot deck
- A new name drop program for parks gift shops to create semi-custom stickers with my illustrations (coming in February)
- My Contentment Over Content workshop for small business owners who want to thrive without social media (coming this Spring)
- Several niche and regional trade shows that feel totally right for Yardia's Pacific Northwest roots
Getting Real About Being a Regional Business
Looking at last year's numbers told me something I probably knew already – Yardia is, at its core, a Pacific Northwest business. Almost all of my best wholesale relationships are with stores connected to PNW tourism, and local craft shows brought in far more revenue than I expected for the few I did. So for 2025, I intend to lean more into the fact that Yardia is a regionally-focused business.
Learning New Things (even when it's scary)
I'm diving into some new areas of study this year, including the rapidly evolving world of technology and AI, and how that interacts with our humanity. As a former teacher, I believe in facing what makes us uncomfortable through education rather than avoidance. So I've been reading, learning, and experimenting with AI tools to understand how they might help small businesses like mine grow more sustainably (mostly on a more back-end usage for things like SEO, ADA accessibility and planning/organization), while also gaining a more nuanced understanding of its benefits, harms and limitations. I want my approach to this to be as responsible and informed as it can be.
Two books I've read in the past couple weeks that I learned a lot from are:
- The Mind's Mirror by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone (a fascinating look at future benefits and dangers of AI from the director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab)
- Futureproof by Kevin Roose (a few years old, but with really sound journalistic insight on maintaining our humanity in the face of AI).
I'm also studying the difference between strategy, goals and plans. Now that I tend to approach my business from the perspective of a longer time frame (5-15 years instead of 1 year at a time), I'm finding it beneficial to dig in more to studying strategy, since that's where I feel like I have the weakest clarity around being intentional about compared to goals and planning.
Moving Forward on This New Path
As I serve as my own pathfinder in 2025, I'm excited to see where curiosity leads me. Whether you're a fellow small business owner, a lover of Pacific Northwest art, or someone who just enjoys following along on this journey, thank you for being part of Yardia's story.
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