Hey there, it's Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast and happy new year. You made it. It's 2021. I'm excited for this year to be so much better than 2020. And that's specifically the topic I'm going to speak to you about today. This is the final episode of Season 3 on consultants and consulting. One of the big ways that I have helped my clients to have the year that they want to have and that I have done in my own business is to come into the year with clear intentions for what we want to have happen.

I love to do that with a theme, a word, or an intention for the year. So, that's what we're going to talk about today. How can you set an intention, set a theme for the year, or even use just one word to help you, guide you through the year, help you to understand and interpret the things that happened? Because that's how much power you have. You can really create what you want to have in your life and you can interpret what happens around you through the prism of this word, phrase or intention that you choose for the year.

2020, was in many people's experience, obviously a dreadful, difficult, and very challenging year. Yet for many of us, there were so many individual pieces of delight and wonderful things that happened. I have clients for whom this was their best year ever in business. Believe it or not, I have clients who had wonderful accomplishments that were in the business, sometimes due to COVID, sometimes due to the way that they reacted to COVID, meaning they found a way through it. In my personal situation, I had wonderful things happen in my business. But one of the things that was really meaningful to me was what happened outside of it. I had chosen the word for the year - connection. I had intended to have live events where I would bring together clients and we would work collaboratively to make our businesses better, but also those around us had a great intention for the year, which unfortunately couldn't happen as became very clear in March. Instead, there were so many other ways, though, that I connected, and frequently like the word of the year. I want you to keep close to you frequently. I would check back and it's on a certain document that I look at every single day. I would see connection, connection.

I began to interpret the things that were happening around me. I would think, oh, well, that's really about connection. How did I want to work with my client’s, connection? One of the things that happened in my personal life is that because of the pandemic, my neighbor and I came together and became much closer. We were all stuck at home and we did the pandemic breaking kind of thing. We were exchanging food and recipes and just supporting each other in a completely contactless way. That connection made my personal life feel richer.

That was something that I was excited to bring into my work. I connected with so many more people because of this isolation and we connected, we talked about Zoom fatigue but one of the things that happened in 2020 was bringing ourselves together with each other and going into each other's homes. Sometimes, that was comfortable and sometimes it wasn't. But this opportunity to see what it's really like, where does this person really work from and live. I've referred a few times to someone's dog who will bark or the children will run into the room and you think, oh, well, that's a real person. I've always thought of them, as you know, Jim, who works at the company, or Mary who does customer service for wherever. But when you see them in their homes, you think, oh, well, that's a person. It seems like, well, of course she is. But that's a lot of times our work can be kind of transactional, which is the opposite of connection. That's just one of the lovely things that I saw happen from 2020, the way that people became more authentic. This is going to be reflected in many trends that are happening in 2021.

I'm reflecting on the ways that this word connection helped me to understand what was going on for me, helped me to keep me in touch with what my original intention for the year had been and helps me to think about what I want 2021 to be. So, what I invite you to do is take a deep breath and think about your experience of 2020 and what you want to be different in 2021. Obviously, I want things to be more pleasant for everyone. I want us to get out of isolation and I want us to not be struggling with many of the issues and challenges and inequities that were happening in 2020.

As you look at this next year, what do you want in your business? How do you want it to feel? If you think about, I use this word vibe a lot of times like what's the energy that you want to be experiencing throughout the year and what do you want to feel in your business? And many times, the word of the year that I'll choose is the one that bubbles up in that sort of meditative question. How do I want 2021 to feel? Now, you might have words that come up for you as you're thinking about that. What I encourage you to do is listen for the one that feels like, yes, that is it. Another thing that you can think about is a theme: the year of, you know, the year of connection or the year of flow. I thought I'd offer a few other ones that I like.

Flow has been a word that I've chosen many times in the past. Sometimes, it's the final one that I'll go with and sometimes it isn't. For example, in 2020, I really wanted the word flow, but I realized I was kind of imposing that on the year. I sat back and I asked, what should 2020 be for me? I listened for a look at what 2020 wants to be for me. And that's when I heard the connection. So, if you think about what 2021 can be for you and how it can serve you and how it can help you, how do you want it to be? We've thought about how we want to feel, how we want the year to be. And you can think a little bit about what you want to see in 2021, what you want to see more of, love, action, peace, visibility. I thought of a couple of these, many people I'm working with are struggling with the issue of visibility. They are frustrated because their marketing isn't working better for them. They're not getting seen by clients. They're not getting more clients. Very often it comes down to the fact that they're just virtually invisible. It seems like they feel like they're everywhere and they're doing a lot of work but there are people who aren't seeing them. So, for example, if you thought the thing that I need to focus on in 2021 is visibility, and that might be the word that you would choose. I want you to really check in with your heart on something like that to make sure that you're aligned with it.

Choosing something like visibility is going to pull you out of your comfort zone. And so, it'll be a year in which a lot of what you're dealing with is discomfort and aligning with that decision and making sure that the visibility you're getting is what you're really seeking and that it's doing for you what you want. I think it's a huge opportunity to choose a word like visibility. You need to feel like you have the willpower to be able to fulfill that. Another word that I looked at was decide. I've talked before about the power of using a word like that. Our business has many decisions. We get what we want by deciding what we want in the business. If you look at making your business what you want it to be, then that could look like over the course of the year making many different decisions. You could say decisions, but I don't want you to invite a bunch of decisions. I want you to have decide energy. I decide what I want things to be. I decide how I want the business to go. So, that's an opportunity.

You could also theme your year around some values. Some values could be, for example, self-care. Is this a year that you're going to be doing a lot of visibility, for example, you're going to be challenging yourself in some ways. The thing that you want to make sure that your growth is rooted in is self-care. You want to make sure that that's something that you return to again and again. Then I would make the theme the year of self-care. It could be the year of growth and self-care. A lot of your year would be about the tension of those potential opposites, integrity. It could be the year of integrity. Whatever that means to you, to me at many times means not being the children of the cobbler. To me, integrity many times means you get your stuff together so that what you are teaching you are doing and what you aspire to be. You are also, you know, you're implementing so thought words and deeds are aligned. In that case, to me, integrity has very often been something that was very important to me in my business, to not be leaking all over the place, things that detracted from my core message because I wasn't consistent or I wasn't implementing and things like that. That's the thing I think you can look at if that resonates with you. Freedom is always a good one to look at. If you feel like you've been struggling with that, like beholden to others' needs and this is the year that you want to pursue freedom and explore what that means for a business owner, then that could be something to look at.

You can also just come down to certain marketing or business principles such as perfect clients. If you want a theme this year that your perfect clients and you've been struggling with the opposite of that in the past, then imagine just focusing for the next 12 months on perfect clients, finding them, cultivating them, managing them. That could be a very interesting and exciting year. I find that this theming of a year, I can really see it. I can see it in retrospect how it made a difference for me. The flow years. Sometimes what I would say is I've chosen a word such as a relentless, I chose with my ego as opposed to really getting grounded and choosing with my spirit. Like what? What's the big growth opportunity for me? Be careful what word you choose. After you've chosen it, sit with it a little while and decide is this really the year of that for you?

And if it is, I know that this is going to be a year of big things for you, if you would like help with anything that you're working on. This is the year that I'm taking many more consultants and helping them to double their businesses without exhaustion. So, if you'd like to be a part of that, definitely reach out to me. I am wishing you a year of connection, of love and peace and perfect clients and a profitable and joyful consultancy.