In last week's blog and podcasts, I talked about visualizing your next year. Marla Tabaka, who's going to be a guest on this week's podcast, asked, “Do you have a word that you use to theme your year?”

What would be your word for 2021? You can pick and choose a word that you think exemplifies what you want to be or how you want the year to be. This year, I chose the word “Signify”. It means to be an indication of, to be a symbol of, or to be of importance. To help me visualize this concept, I think of it as a lighthouse. A lighthouse sits out on a cove so you don't crash your ship into the rocks. That's how I want to visualize this year. I want to be somebody who helps people run their businesses better, and I want to be very intentional about it.

Be A Beacon

During last week's Bacon Podcast interview with Mark S.A. Smith, I mentioned that on the podcast, and he said, “You've gone from BACON to beacon.” And I replied, “Yeah, that's exactly right.” If you haven't listened to Episode 631, you need to go check it out. It's got some amazing content in there. Now, BACON stands for Building Authentic Connections Online Networking. Beacon just adds an E to bacon. I haven't come up with an acronym for that – yet.

I want to be intentional about being a beacon this year for my tribe, for the people that I know, for my clients and I want to help you learn how to do that as well. How to light up your business in 2021, and maybe go from BACON to beacon.

Let me define those three things. Let's start off with, be an indication of. I am going to internalize that as taking intentional action. To be a symbol of, I'm going to internalize that as lead by example. And be of importance, I'm going to internalize that as provide more value.

Let me provide some examples of how I intend to do this, and there may be some tools that you could use to do the same. Nothing says you have to have the same word, but I want you to consider some of the things that I'm presenting.

Be An Indication Of – Take Intentional Action

One of the things that I want to do to take intentional action is to be more engaged with people – to build better relationships. What I'm doing is using my 10-10-10 Strategy to talk to 10 people a day. If I do that every single workday, I can reach out to over 200 people a month.

The thing I want to do is identified those 200 people. They could be current customers, past customers, prospects, vendors. It doesn't matter. But I want to reach out to those people and say, “Hey, how are you doing? And how can I help you?” Another thing I'm doing to be more intentional is to make my mailing list and my email marketing better.

Now, when I say marketing, I'm talking about having an email list that's engaged to create conversations. I have a list in one program that has almost 5,000 people in it, and very, very few people open this up. I've been collecting these names over years.

I went in and found the people that have been opening up the emails and then I brought them into the new program. It's called Active Campaign.

I don't have time to talk about the specifics of that right now, but it will give me the ability to better interact with those people. People generally will leave your email list when they unsubscribe, but by not opening, it's simply a soft unsubscribe so as not to offend you (or they are just too lazy to leave.) Either way, I don't want to send out emails to a bunch of people who don't want to have a conversation. Taking control of my email and that program is going to help me become more intentional with people.

Finally, I'm going to work harder at improving the quality of the content that I deliver to you and to them. I want to make sure that I'm upping my game this year, that my podcasts are more solid, that my blogs are more solid, that the things I'm doing add more perceived value to the end user.

Follow By Design & Lead By Example

The second piece of this is I want to follow by design and lead by example. What I mean by that is I am going to optimize the time I spend in networking groups. I belong to a lot of different networking groups and I meet a lot of people there. But the thing is that I can't provide them value because they're not my ideal customers. Yes, I can teach them some things, but I want to identify groups that hare more aligned with what I'm doing in my business so I can help them grow their business.

One of the things I want to do is join some more Masterminds this year. I want to start to hang around with people that are going to help me grow my business so I can help other people grow theirs.

One of the things you hear all the time is, “If you're the smartest person in the room, you're probably in the wrong room.” I need to make sure I get into the right rooms.

The other thing I want to do is learn more about winning business models, especially in this time of upheaval in business. Obviously, the first quarter and the second quarter are still going to be rough. Hopefully, by the third or fourth quarter, we'll get back to some normalcy. But still, there's so much to learn.

The other thing I want to do is create more Masterminds, create more opportunities to talk to more people to help them learn from what I've learned.

Be Of Importance – Provide MORE Value

Last year was an amazing success. I've learned so much and I have so much to share. So I want to find people like you who want to learn how to do some of the things I've learned and discovered, or maybe even help you find people to help you do it, just like how I hired two VAs to help me update and manage my email marketing program.

The last piece of this is to provide more value. Now, you've heard the adage, “Time is money.” My time is valuable, but so is the time of my clients. If somebody runs a million-dollar business, their time is worth $500 an hour. How do I increase the value of my time and what I get paid for it? And how do I use that to increase the value that I provide for my clients and my audiences?

Final Thoughts

I want to help people identify their value and help them achieve more profitable ways of doing business. This could be through tools, technologies, or getting somebody else to do it just like I hired those VAs. Finally, I want to continue to learn, to execute, to optimize and to adapt, and then teach other people all of the things I've learned through the process.

I do that myself all the time. I am my own Petri dish with Active Campaign, and then I could take that and help my other clients learn to utilize it better. So this year's word is “Signify”. I want to become a lighthouse or go from bacon to beacon to help people not to crash into the rocks of business.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about choosing your theme word and ways you can help yourself and your customers can go from bacon to beacon to have a more successful New Year. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?

To learn more about this and other topics on Internet Marketing, visit our podcast website at http://www.baconpodcast.com/podcasts/