In this oh-so-crazy time of year, we want you to take a moment to pause, reflect, and set a clear intention for the year to come…

What a year it has been!

We want to begin this blog post by saying a HUGE thank you to our amazing Design and Prosper community! You are the reason why we jump out of bed in the morning.

We’re so excited to be getting to do this with you every day – and we’re not just saying that. Those of you who have worked with us in the Academy or in one-on-one coaching, you know that the passion we feel for our role as your mentors is real. We totally love this! And we get to do it because of you!

But don’t think we’re leaving out our beautiful blog and podcast community! We love being your mentors! We love receiving your messages and it fills our hearts up to know that we are making an impact for you. It’s such an honour helping you to set up your beautiful businesses and being able to hear how you’re flourishing.

And we’re going to continue to do it! We’re so excited about 2022.

So let’s get ready for 2022!

It’s traditional to use this time of year for reflecting on what we’ve done and setting intentions for the year to come. But amidst the frenetic pace – the shopping, the deadlines, the catch-ups – it can be hard to take time to really do it properly.

And it’s important to do it properly – because that reflection is the key to our continued growth.

By celebrating what we did really well and assessing what we could do to improve, we can really constructively pinpoint how to take our businesses to the next level. You don’t want to rush through the process haphazardly and miss that opportunity.

So, this week, we want you to carve out a bit of time, tuck yourself away with a journal, and reflect on it all.

First, list 5 things you did that were courageous this year

Or at least start with 5. We think that once you begin you’ll find you can add 6 and 7 and 8. Keep adding!

They can be little acts of courage or big acts of courage, but we’re betting that you did lots of courageous things this year.

For a start, you are a business owner! You owned and ran a business in 2021. Think about how many people are never brave enough to do that. But here you are, doing it. That’s hugely courageous.

Consider the way that you express your creativity through your work every day. And that you place a value on that creativity and tell the world, ‘My creativity is something you need, and want to pay me for’.

That’s so totally brave! Most people never do that in their whole lives, but you do it daily – you’ve based an entire business on your own creativity!

When you start writing them down, you’ll realise you’ve done so many brave things this year. Be they large or small, you can’t run a creative business without performing beautiful acts of courage all the time – and it can be easy to take them for granted.

So this is your moment to acknowledge to yourself, ‘Hey, I did that! and that! and that! Remember all the times you felt the fear and did it anyway. All the times your stomach was full of butterflies, but you reached even deeper and backed yourself. Every risk you took for the sake of achieving your dream for your work and your life.

And when you’re done, read through it and let yourself feel proud for every single one of those leaps of faith.

Next, list 5 things that you would like to do in 2022 that require even more courage.

This will look different for all of you. There are so many things that could be an act of of courage in 2022. What will yours be?

It could be about that dream client that you’ve never been confident enough to approach. Maybe 2022 is the year you’re going to send them a beautiful direct mail campaign or slip into their DMs.

It might be your first hire. We remember that one well, it’s a huge act of bravery – the moment when you really commit to getting behind yourself and your dream.

It could be that you’re going to show up on stories for the first time, or you’re going to do your first reel.

It could be that you’re going to say goodbye to a troublesome client, or totally rebrand yourself to focus on the direction you’ve identified as the one you really want to go in.

It’s so individual, and our dreams and fears always walk hand in hand. So take a moment, think about the things you wish you could do, and the things you know you should be doing, but you’ve just been a bit nervous about taking the plunge, and commit to 5 of them for 2022.

Trust us, you’ll feel scared, but you’ll also begin to feel very very excited.

Now it’s time to celebrate your wins!

As soloprenours, we can forget to do this. We don’t have end of year parties with speeches, or end of year company emails congratulating us for all we’ve achieved.

That crazy momentum just takes us along and we forget to stop and actually say to ourselves, Hey, I’ve just worked on this amazing project! Or, I’ve finally gotten my first big brand or my first client ever! Or, I’ve just hit my financial target or I’ve opened my first business account!

But it’s so important to do this. You are your own boss – so it’s up to you to acknowledge you and give yourself that little bonus.

So decide how you’re going to celebrate your wins. Take yourself off to a restaurant, buy yourself a cocktail and cheers yourself, let yourself have that treat you’ve been holding back on, whatever is your way to congratulate you. But don’t just let it go by. You deserve this. You’ve done things to be proud of this year, be they big or small. Take some time to reward yourself for all the ways you’ve shown up for yourself and won.

Finally, choose your word.

What is the energy of the year going to be for you?  What is the business attitude you are taking into your life and business for 2022?

We love to pick a single word that encapsulates exactly what we want the next year to be about for us. One word that gives us a really beautiful way to gauge all year if we’re on track with what we want for ourselves.

This year, our single word was ‘ease’. With everything we did, we asked the question, does that feel easy? Every major and minor decision that we made had to have an element of ease to it. And looking back, it’s made a huge difference.

We are in a much better place in terms of ease, compared to the way we were working this time last year. And we did that by continually asking ourselves, what would this look like if it was easy?

Don’t get us wrong, we like to be challenged, but having that sense of ease and flow to the work that we’re doing is essential to us. By continually using the word ‘ease’ to question ourselves, we kept our focus on where we needed it to be, and allowed ourselves to let go of the parts of our business that were working against us and not for us.

The year before that it was ‘fun’. Are we having fun? Every day, when we set off into our individual tasks, we’d say to each other or ourselves, ‘Have fun!’. And if things felt heavy and they didn’t feel fun, we would address it because that was our intention for that year.

The powerful thing about this process is, once you’ve focused on an intention for an entire year, it stays with you. We’ll never release ‘fun’ -it’s a basic part of who we are! And now that we’ve lived with ease for a year, it’s become something that’s organic. It’s a part of our vocabulary. We’ll always be asking, does this feel easy?

So now, it’s time to add another beautiful word into our third year of business. And it’s exciting to think that by the time 2022 is over, we’ll have completely cemented that intention into the foundation of our business, and it will be another part of the strength we’ll be building on from thereon. 

So what word did we choose?

Shh….it’s a secret….

We’re sorry, but we can’t tell you our word for this year or it will lose all its power.

I mean, we’d really like to, but it’s simply not how it works.

Just kidding, we’re bursting to tell you!

So, drum roll please, our word for 2022 is…..

attrACTION

The intention we’ve set for our business this year is attraction. And we love it, because it’s two words for the price of one! It has ‘attract’ of course, but it also has ‘ACTION’! We are so excited to take this powerful word into 2022!

For us, the whole idea of attraction is really important. Not just from a monetary sense, but attracting beautiful people into our lives, attracting great ideas and new processes, attracting learning and growth.

But we also really want to focus on ACTION! Showing up with inspired action, tapping into our gut instincts, rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. We want to do great actions in the world. We want to get out there and make things happen.

There are so many things that we can unpack with the word attraction and they’re all so good. So get ready for 2022!

So let’s wrap this year up!

And let’s do it with reflection, celebration and intention!

If we didn’t make it clear before, we love you! We can’t wait to work with you in 2022! And we’d love to hear about your acts of courage, the words you’ve chosen, and the ways you’ve celebrated your successes.

Have a beautiful Christmas and New Year in whatever way you choose. Pour some love on yourself. You deserve it, you are brave, creative, and incredible!

We’re so proud of you!

Much love

Kris and Donna xo

Podcast #51 Full Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris: Hey everybody.

[00:00:01] Donna: Hello.

[00:00:02] Kris: Hey, what a year? It has been. I’m not sure when you’ll be listening to this, but for us right now, it’s just before the end of the year. And you know, the energy has been a bit frenetic and there’s been a lot of stuff happening and now we’re just getting into that mode of, okay, we’re going to slow down now.

[00:00:20] Donna: Thank goodness. 

[00:00:23] Kris: It’s been a really big year, you know, um, not even just from our business perspective, but from life perspective and like stuff that’s been happening in the world perspective. And we just wanted to say a really big thank you. Thank you to you. Our beautiful, beautiful, amazing design and prosper community because you. You are the reason why we get up out of bed in the morning. You know, we are jumping out of bed in the morning to serve you.

[00:00:55] Donna: It is so freaking exciting serving you. And for those of you who have worked with us in the academy or worked with us, one-to-one, you know, that the excitement for Kris and I is really palpable. It’s real. We love it. And we are excited by it and we feel really honored to do it and feel really honored that you choose us and continue to choose us as your coaches, as your mentors, to help you set your beautiful businesses up and to allow us to watch you flourish. It’s just a dream. So we are so grateful. So thank you so very much.

[00:01:30] Kris: And we love that our podcast community, we know that you were seeing us as your mentors too, and we love that. We love being your mentors. We love receiving your messages. We love it when you reach out to us and it just fills our hearts with joy to know that we are making an impact for you. So we’re going to continue to do it. We’re excited about 2022.

[00:01:49] Donna: Yes. Yes, absolutely. You are beautiful podcast community. You are part of our family. Absolutely. The biggest part of our family, really? This is where it all began because this time last year, The design and prosper academy was, was literally just an inkling. Literally it wasn’t really fully realized yet, but don’t get us wrong. It was, it was a big, big vision, really big wasn’t it, Kris? It 

[00:02:16] Kris: Yeah. 

[00:02:17] Donna: it was scary, exciting. And you know, you are beautiful podcast community gave us the courage and the incentive and the I dunno, they get up and go to, to make it happen. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts, because I do believe strongly. And I think Kris you’re the same that if it wasn’t for our beautiful podcast community, we wouldn’t have evolved and grown into what we now have been doing for the past 12 months. So, so thank you. Thank you.

[00:02:47] Kris: I got to believe that even, I can’t believe that this time, last year we didn’t have the academy. We didn’t have the name or the platform, or, you know, we, we knew what it was going to be, but we weren’t sure how it was going to unfold. And now 12 months on, we have run the academy twice. We’ve had

[00:03:04] Donna: yes.

[00:03:05] Kris: two amazing groups of humans join us in that, which has just been beyond our wildest dreams, being able to serve those people in that space. And, you know, we’ve, we’ve had people in tears in our live coaching sessions that we do just telling us how much that it to them. 

how much they’ve transformed as a result of what they’ve learned in that. Yes, that’s what we wanted to do. That is what we wanted to do.

[00:03:37] Donna: That’s what you and I, when we sat on the, your couch, I think it was Kris your house. When we were sitting down there and we’re dreaming and thinking about what this could look like, you know, we had visions of making that kind of impact for other designers. We were so passionate that other designers don’t need to go through all of the pitfalls or experience all of the drama that we did, we could individually and separately or witness others because we’ve got a really big group of beautiful designer friends. So with all of these things that have happened, that we have personally experienced or watched very close friends experience. And we were like, no, there has got to be a way where we can deliver our knowledge in a package with a little bow where people can feel really loved and supported and nurtured and not have to have such a big barrier or have any of the issues that we had. Really, they are avoidable.

[00:04:43] Kris: Yeah. And we can sit at asset was pretty lucky in terms of the, um, the group of people we have in our lives, in our friendship circle. And, you know, I remember one time we all went to a business function. I can’t remember what it was, but it was some business function, we were all interested in. And I think the facilitator of this function was like, oh, okay. So you all come together. And so what do you do? I’m a designer. What do you do? I’m a designer. What do you do? Oh, I’m an interior designer. What do you do? I’m an interior designer and you? I’m an artist and you, you know, it was like photography.

It was really funny that we’re all had that same, um, kind of creative career path and we’ve all come together. So it’s quite beautiful. 

[00:05:24] Donna: Absolutely.

[00:05:26] Kris: Yeah, we just wanted to give you a big hug, a big virtual hug, a big audio hug or visual hug. If you’re on our YouTube channel watching and say how much we love you. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you for supporting us as well.

[00:05:43] Donna: Thanks for helping us. Our podcast community has given us the courage to do what we do now on the daily with the rest of our business. So, um, massive, massive. Thank you to you all. Yeah.

[00:05:58] Kris: So we wanted to give you some tips and some ideas for you to get ready for the new year. So designers get ready. It’s going to be an amazing year. 2022 it has got a good sound about it. Doesn’t it? Well, those twos we love it.

[00:06:14] Donna: Yeah. We love, we love a bit of numerology. 

[00:06:17] Kris: Yeah. And you know, the end of year is just a really good time for reflection. It’s a really good time to plan ahead a bit and just to sit with yourself and go, okay, what happened? What happened last year? What’s going to happen next year?

[00:06:31] Donna: Yeah, absolutely. And we think that reflection is key to continued growth because with reflection comes, what we did really well and also what we could do to improve. And we’re wanting to see those gaps. We’re wanting to actually constructively look at where we could improve our business. So reflection does that for us. And for us, it’s really important to take the time to do that because often the momentum at the end of this year, like Kris said, this frenetic end of the year, often that frenetic energy builds so much momentum that we land in the next year without having had a chance to reflect. And then when we get to that point we’re like, okay, well we do some reflection now and it’s almost like the momentum starts to build for the next year. And it’s a missed opportunity. There’s some strategies that we’d like to share with you today to actually allow you to stop, take stock, check out the year that’s been celebrate the wins. And also look for areas or, or room for improvement 

[00:07:33] Kris: We’ve got some suggestions for you. And there are a lot of these kind of end of year round ups out there online, but this is our take on it specifically for designers and what we’ve found helpful. So we want you to carve out a little bit of time sometime over the new years, little break, you know, there just tuck yourself away, get yourself away from the friends and family and, and get a journal and start thinking about some of this stuff.

[00:07:59] Donna: So the first thing that we do, and it’s a little bit different, like Kris said, which we really love, the first thing is list five things that you did that were courageous this year and have a really good think about that, because so much that we do in business is courageous, but think of just five, your top five things where you were courageous and we actually challenge you to stop at five. We think you’ll keep going on and on and on and on. And don’t stop. Don’t stop. But just the top five. What, what are those? Yeah.

[00:08:34] Kris: Well, they can be little acts of courage or big acts of courage, but we’re betting that you did lots of courageous things this year. courage is really important word to us. It’s one of our core values words. We, we, stand by in our business and we’re here to help other people be courageous as well in their businesses. We’re here to help designers be courageous in their businesses. So , if you come up with some things big or small, we’d love to hear from you as well. Tell us what you did. That was courageous this year.

[00:09:06] Donna: And we could kick it off with, I am a business owner. Number one, I did that this year. I owned a business. I ran a business in 2021. Number one thing to be courageous that is so courageous. So you can see how acts of courage are really daily in a design, in any business , but in our world, in the graphic design world and web design world being in business is courageous. So we just want to really get you to think about how not everybody can do that. And you are doing it. So these beautiful acts of courage are happening daily. And to just to actually go, okay, I did that and that, and that and that, and really celebrate that you’ve, you’ve been courageous

[00:09:50] Kris: Mm, so another thing we want you to think about is in 2022 list five things that will require even more courage. In 2022. Think about that one.

[00:10:04] Donna: Like it could be that client that you’ve never had the courage to approach that dream client. And you’re going to send them a beautiful direct mail campaign or you’re going to slip into their DMS or something. What is it? It might be your first hire. That could be your act of courage, a big act of courage for next year. So could look different for all of you. So have a think about what that might be.

[00:10:28] Kris: it could be that you’re going to show up on stories for the first time you’re going to do your first reel. It could be something like that even, but so you’ve already been courageous. We know that you have in 2021. So what are you going to do that’s even more courageous in 2022?

[00:10:43] Donna: Yeah, absolutely. This next one we’ve talked about before, it’s really dear to our hearts. We want you to celebrate your wins. That is important. Again, that momentum, that crazy momentum just takes us along and we ride that wave of momentum. And we forget to stop and actually say, Hey, I’ve just worked on this amazing project or I’ve gotten a first big brand or, my first client ever, or whatever the case may be. And we forget to actually celebrate that. You don’t have to celebrate in a massive way. It might just be a tiny way, but whatever it is, you know, take yourself off to a restaurant and order the cocktail or mocktail or whatever you want and sit there and cheers yourself because you did that. That’s, that’s all you, so celebrate what you’ve done and what you’ve achieved.

[00:11:34] Kris: Yeah, you need to go out and have a little celebration because as solopreneurs, we tend not to, we don’t have the Christmas parties and that sort of thing. We talked about this on a podcast last year, actually about what you should be doing to celebrate you, but it could be something really small that you’re celebrating. Like it might be that you opened a bank account for your business, but that’s a really beautiful win to celebrate. So make sure you’re celebrating your wins at the end of this year.

[00:12:00] Donna: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely do that. And the last one is something that Kris and I have done for the last two years and that we take a single word with us as our intention, as our attitude and our focus for the year ahead. So we don’t do the big, you know, what is it when you do, uh, at the end of

[00:12:23] Kris: setting new year’s resolutions.

[00:12:25] Donna: resolutions. We don’t do new year’s resolutions. We have an intention for that year and we’ve distilled it down. Thanks to one of our beautiful coaches. She did this . Take a single word. And what is that single word? That beautiful word that you are wanting to take into, into the new year for your life and for your business? What, what is it?

[00:12:45] Kris: what is the energy of the year going to be for you? 

[00:12:49] Donna: Yeah. So last year for us, our single word was ease and everything we did, we asked the question, does that feel easy? Does that create ease? We were seeking ease with every major and minor decision that we were making. It had to have an element of ease to it. So it’s this really beautiful gauge that you can set with a single word the year before that it was fun. Are we having fun. And then every interaction that we had, and we have the beautiful benefit of being in a business together where we’re in a partnership and we get to actually speak to each other pretty much on the daily. And we got to say to each other, okay, see you later. We have our tasks to do have fun, have fun. You’re having fun. And if things felt heavy and they didn’t feel fun, we would address it because that was our intention for that year. So. We had to choose a word for this year or not had to want to too excited by it. Got excited to choose our single word. And it’s harder than you think. So. Let us know how you go. We hope that you do something like this. Let us know. We’d love to know what your word is. I’m going to do a little drum roll and I’m going to let reveal it. That’s it. I got to do the drum roll. So Kris, our word for 2022 is..

[00:14:07] Kris: it is attraction. Now, so it is not just the word attraction though. So what we’re looking at is we’ve got A T T R and then in capitals action. So we’re really focusing on the action part of attraction as well, because we believe that in order to have attraction, you actually do need to have inspired action. So we’re really excited about this word.

[00:14:34] Donna: Such a cool word. So cool. It’s two.

[00:14:38] Kris: Yes, it’s two, for the price of.

[00:14:41] Donna: two for the price of one. And so we were just like you know, giggling girties at this because it was just so much fun and it really is beautiful for us for design and prosper going into 2022 with this word and really making sure that our intention is really honored around this word for you, our beautiful community moving forward. So yeah, we’re so excited by it.

[00:15:06] Kris: And for us, showing up with inspired action is really important. Tapping into our gut instincts, asking for guidance. Also the whole idea of attraction is really important to us as well. Not just from a monetary sense, but attracting beautiful people into our lives, attracting great ideas and new ways of doing things, learning about new things. There’s so many things that we can unpack with the word attraction, but we are really keen to do a lot of action, but action, that doesn’t feel like work, you know, like that’s, that’s what we have discovered this year without ease word. Compared to how we were working this time last year, we are in such a much better place in terms of ease. And I really do believe that word has helped us, like, you know, what would this look like? If it was easy, it really did help us to have that focus. Because we’re working less now and we’re, we’re ditching things if they don’t feel easy, you know, we, we like to be challenged, don’t get us wrong, but it’s just, having that sense of ease and flow to the work that we’re doing is really important to us. And, the same with like action. We want to do great actions in the world. We want to get out there and make things happen. And so get ready for 2022. We’ve got stuff to make happen.

[00:16:24] Donna: Yeah, yeah. Which is exciting. And I think as well, there’s a little bit of like compound interest on the words that we’ve already selected. So we’ll never release fun. That’s a massive part of who we are and because we’ve lived with ease for a year, it is now just something that we live. It’s a part of our vocabulary. We’ll always be asking, does this feel easy? That’s massively important to us. Now we just get to add this beautiful third word into our third year of business. And it’s exciting to think that we’ve got those other ones that are the foundations for where we’ve come from and where we’ll continue to take these words with us because they’ve really served us well. Really well. 

[00:17:04] Kris: So what’s your word? Let us know. Please let us know. We’d love to know. 

[00:17:08] Donna: Yeah. So beautiful people. It is the end of the year is the end of 2021. And we’ve noticed there’s some funny energy towards the end of the year. Every year, it’s the crazy frenetic energy that happens at this time of the year. So there’s a lot of intensity. There’s a lot of expectation. There’s a lot of just craziness that happens at this time of year. And we hope that that’s not the case for you, but generally in our industry, there’s a lot of deadlines because the universal deadline is Christmas. Right.

[00:17:39] Kris: Yeah. or end of new years. Yeah. 

[00:17:41] Donna: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody needs everything done by, by this time of the year. So just make sure that you take time to pause, take time, to reflect, take time to breathe and center and get yourself set ready for next year. So you deserve that. You deserve to take that time out and to pause. 

[00:18:02] Kris: And if you’re looking for these prompts, we’ll have them in our full show notes on our website. So we’ll have the link to the show notes for you. So good luck with that. Take some time for yourself. Self care. 

[00:18:16] Donna: And please, please tell us your word. We want to know.

[00:18:22] Kris: Okay. We hope that you have a chance to have a break and that you are surrounded by people you love and that you have a really beautiful whatever the end of the year is for the season. We hope you have a lovely time.

[00:18:35] Donna: We do. Enjoy.

[00:18:37] Kris: Yeah. Enjoy. Okay.

[00:18:39] Donna: bye.

[00:18:43] Kris: All right