What’s your word for 2020?

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Have you noticed an abundance of posts and stories all about choosing a word for this new year?

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I know that I have been seeing a ton of friends and even acquaintances who have posted asking others what their word for the year is and sharing theirs.

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Well today on episode number 253, we're going to dive into the reasons you may want to choose a word. I'm going to share what my word for 2020 is, and let you in on a few of the things that are coming down the road that are super exciting in this brand new year.

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Welcome to episode number 253 of the In a Weekend podcast. I'm your host Yong Pratt, and I'm so glad you are tuning in for this first episode of the new decade. Here on the podcast, we dive in tips, tricks, tools and resources to help you to do things quickly, efficiently and easily. Things like launching your podcast in just a weekend, launching your first or next ebook in a weekend, and even launching your blog in, you guessed it - a weekend we love helping business owners to share everything that makes them awesome, especially on podcasts.

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I love podcasting. We love podcasting here. And it's one of the best marketing tools I've personally discovered for my own business, to help people to get to know like and trust me before they work further with us. It's one of the main tools I use to connect with people and help them on their journey to get to that next step.

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So I'm curious, have you chosen a word for 2020? If so, head over to the show notes for today's episode at yongpratt.com.253 and let me know.

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So let's first talk about why you would even want to choose a word for 2020. Choosing a word for the year is something I have not been doing very long. And maybe it came in fashion just a few years ago because I feel like I've only ever chosen a couple of words.

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And when I choose a word, I kind of go through a process of narrowing things down. What does that mean? Well, I usually write down a bunch of words that I like that I want to embody in the year. And I'll go through and ask myself some questions like, does this word really encapsulate everything I want to do this year? Does it speak to who I want to become and the goals that I want to reach this year? And sometimes I find that it'll be a couple words, maybe two or three words that are kind of close, mean a little bit different things, and then I'll go try to find a word that combines those things and really gives me the essence of what it is I want to embody in the year.

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Do you have a process for this? Again, come over to our show notes at Yongpratt.com/253 and let me know.

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So why on earth would you choose a word? Well, it's kind of like, I guess, goal setting where you set out to create certain things. You have these big dreams, you have these big visions, and you want to bring them into reality and take your business to that next level that you are dreaming of. And so the word that you might want to choose probably is tied to some of the things you want to create in the year. It really for me, the word of the year really speaks to who do I want to become in the new year? And for me, I want to be helpful in the new year. I want to make a bigger impact. I want to help more of you, dear listeners, and the students in our classes and my private clients really start to amplify everything that makes you unique - those gifts and talents, those experiences, those lessons you've learned. I love helping people to package that all up, look at things in a new way and be strategic about how they take all this knowledge that they have, and share it with the world in a meaningful way.

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And when I mean meaningful, that means to me that it impacts positively the people who are on the receiving end. Plus it impacts you as an individual, and it helps you to grow your business. It helps you to grow your brand so it's meaningful for everyone involved. It is certainly not a one-sided kind of thing.

4:54
Recently, I learned a new word from a new mentor and this word is 'knowledge broker." Isn't that an interesting word, knowledge broker? And these mentors actually talked about knowledge brokers, in the sense that there are people who are needed to help share information with the world, whether that is your own information, or you're helping someone else to share theirs in a positive manner. There's lots of ways you can be the broker of knowledge, but it is about taking the knowledge that you have inside the knowledge that somebody else has in them, and then sharing that with the world in a big way through classes through workshops, through masterminds, through intensives through all sorts of different ways. There's so many ways to slice and dice knowledge, right?

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If you think about the podcast, we are brokering knowledge. I sometimes will share the knowledge that I've gained through the years and I love to share my lessons learned and the mistakes I've made to make sure that you don't fall into those same traps or pitfalls. And you can get there much faster. It's about helping you to expedite your path to creating a podcast, for instance. I've made all the mistakes in the book. I've been doing this for a long time since 2013 s o if I can share some of my wisdom and my knowledge with you, that serves you in a big way, that also ensures that I'm living up to my moral obligation to share what I know.

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I truly believe and there's lots of people who say things to this effect that you were placed here on the planet to do something special. You weren't placed on the planet to be miserable and not make the kind of impact you know you can make. Even the chances of you being born in the first place are so astronomical. The numbers are crazy that you're one in millions. A lot of events had to conspire, and work together in order for you even to be on this planet. So because you are here, you kind of have this, this obligation, this this duty to your fellow man to help them on their journey, whatever that journey is, and to be that person that can guide them to that next level. And that's what I love to do.

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I love to be teaching. I have been doing it for more than two decades now, which is hard to believe. But I hope that in my coming on here every week and sharing wins and sharing lessons, learned and sharing guests and having them bring their skills and knowledge that your path to success for your podcast or your ebook or your blog is that much faster because the world, my friend does absolutely need you. Even if running your business is a part time gig now and you want to do it full time. There are ways that we can start to share your awesome with the world that is very strategic because on this podcast, we're all about strategy.

8:08
I've learned recently that I'm kind of a nerd or a geek when it comes to talking about systems and processes and strategy. And I get super excited about helping other business owners dream bigger -dreams for themselves and for their business, whether that means changing up their brand or ways to monetize their business. I just love that big picture, blue-sky thinking strategy part of business. I totally geek out about that, which is interesting because I'm a creative, so I like to dream big, but then I couple that with being able to pull back the reins a little bit and create those systems and those processes that business owners sometimes forget about creating.

8:56
So I'm digressing a little bit, but I really wanted to make it abundantly clear that here on the podcast we are here to serve you to share my knowledge and the knowledge of my guests with you to help you on your journey to expedite the process to have you benefit from the knowledge here on this podcast. I hope that comes across. I'm super excited about that. And in 2020 we have some big, hairy audacious goals. Our B-hags are massive, probably the biggest goals I ever had in my business to date. The first thing I want to tell you about is that in this new year, we are doing a complete rebrand. We are changing the name of the podcast, we are changing the name of our business to really better explain what it is that we do without so many words.

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For example, the podcast is currently called In a weekend. And while that makes sense in my head and the heads of my students who have taken any of our in a weekend series of classes, it makes sense we like take fast action, we like to encourage momentum, we like for you to have big wins fast. And so we like to do those things in a weekend. So when it came to changing the name of the podcast that made total sense, however, for those people who have not been part of this world, and this podcast in a weekend doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, because there's not any context to go with it. So this new name is a new brand that is coming up, which is going to launch on February 17, which is my birthday. So I thought it would be an awesome day to really celebrate a lot of things. The brand is going to be epic. I've rebranded before, actually several times, not just this podcast, but by brick and mortar business.

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When I ran that I went through several rebrand and I've learned a lot of things in the process. This rebrand thought is a little bit different because I'm just so excited about this because I finally feel like what we're going to be bringing to you with our new name and our new brand and our new mission is going to benefit you tremendously and to really help you dive into your unique gifts, your unique talents.

11:13
These are something I like to call superpowers. And the funny thing is years ago, I published my first book called Raising a Superhero: How to Unleash Your Child's 8 Superpowers and Propel Learning Through the Arts. It's a very long title for a not so long book all about helping parents to help their kids through the education system. Because if your kids are in the education system, you may understand that the education system is not set up to help all kids equally, nor are all kids' superpowers or their gifts and talents celebrated in school and sometimes they're not celebrated, but we're asked to dim their light a little bit. As a parent, I saw this happening to my own kids. I saw this happening to the kids at my studio. And I took an idea that I learned about in graduate school and really put my own spin on it because it's these superpowers that differentiate each of us from anyone else.

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When it comes to doing things like courses, are there other people out there in my world that are teaching podcasting? Absolutely. And for a long time, I really hesitated to enter into this podcasting space because there are some really huge names, and I didn't feel like I could compete. But the reality is people don't buy programs, they buy people, they're connected to people and they trust you, my friend, to lead them down this path even though your program or your course or your coaching, maybe similar to someone else's. They're getting you and your unique gifts, your unique experiences, your unique superpowers, the way you view the world is and we want to embrace those things and really celebrate them in 2020.

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So with this rebrand, it is all about helping you discover and unleash those superpowers. And really amplify that to the next level in a very strategic way. So we're taking a lot of the different loves that I have bundling them up together into one new brand, and I'm so excited about revealing it to you. You'll definitely be seeing posts on social and even in your email. I hope you are subscribed to our email list because we share a lot of great stories and a lot of great lessons learned and a lot of things I only share with my email subscribers. So definitely if you're not on our email list, let me know on our show notes, Yong pratt.com/253 and when you're there, you'll notice a couple of different ways that you can hop on to our email list. And trust me, I am not going to spam you. I only want to serve you and help you on your path to discover and amplify everything that makes you unique. And really to help you understand what your superpowers are, so that you can share them with the world, my friends, because that is what life is about: sharing what you know, being a broker of knowledge and helping people learn through self- education - another word I learned recently. It's the idea that we as individuals can choose to educate ourselves, not by necessarily having to go through the traditional means of education like a four-year degree, but to be able to have a choice to choose to find someone out in the world who is doing exactly what you want to do, and learning directly from them to cut your learning time in half and really condensing years into days. That's what this year is all about. So with all that being said, I want to share with you that my word for 2020 is soar: S- O-A-R.

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For years now I've been playing kind of a small game where I've I've elevated myself and my brand a little bit but there is some big fear to overcome and things like self-doubt that crept in and kept me playing a smaller game. As a result I was kind of stuck in traffic. I did an episode years ago about being stuck in traffic about how sometimes we let what else is happening around us. We let things like social media get us down because we see someone else's successes and we think, 'wow, well that person hasn't gone through my things. They don't understand. Why do they have success that I don't?' And all that yuck that is the comparison trap or Comparison Island where you go and you start comparing yourself. All those things have kept me down in the fray and in the traffic in the muck. And so this year, with this new brand, with the new name of the podcast and with everything we have planned for you here, it's time to soar, my friends, like an eagle up through the blue sky, looking down, being able to have this bird's eye view about what is happening, what is possible, and staying out of them.

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Are you with me? I would love to help you soar in 2020 as well. Come on over to the show notes at YongPratt.com/253. Let me know your word of the year, how you chose it and tell me yay or nay: Are you my friends ready to soar in 2020? Because I, for one, sure am, and I cannot wait to help you do the same. I'll catch you on the next episode. Cheers!