Intro by Skip Cohen

I love this post from Justin and Mary Marantz’s archives for a couple of reasons. First, Mary’s always on point when it comes to keeping it light and fun. Second, and maybe more important for all of us are topics that keep your readers engaged.

Think about what Mary’s sharing here. It was December 2014 and she was working on a word that described her feelings for the new year ahead. One word, one aspiration, one goal to define the new year.

So, it might be December 2014 when Mary published this post, but let’s take a look at the fourth quarter of this year and then December 2018. If you could come up with one word to describe what you want the last months of the year to be like, what would it be? Now, go a giant step further and what’s the word for 2019?

It’s hard to believe this year is rapidly coming to a close, but time is our most valuable commodity and you’re not wasting it thinking about how to describe your hopes for the months ahead!


By Mary Marantz

The other day I was sitting with a friend and she asked me a tough question. She said, “What is the feeling that you want 2015 to stand for? Not a goal, not an achievement, but something that can’t be described other than just a general way you want to feel throughout the year?” Tough order, right?

In true Mary fashion, I threw out a few options….things that were really just goals and gold stars that I thought could masquerade as a general vibe. We’ll call them feelings with an overachiever complex. But my friend called me out on it every. single. time. “Tell me what you want to FEEL Mary, not just another thing you can do.”

I marinated on that a second. Chewed on my bottom lip, as I tapped freshly red painted nails in a drum beat across my right cheek.

And that’s when it hit me. Rooted. In 2015, I want to feel rooted. I had started with grounded, but that didn’t seem enough somehow. Grounded implies merely standing firm on something….but I wanted to dig in. To be anchored. To create permanence. To say, this thing that I’m doing, these things that I believe in, my place in this world…it goes way beyond the surface. It plugs into something deeper. And it draws its strength from that.

In 2015, I want to feel rooted. I want to be rooted in our home, in our marriage, in our work, in what we do for others and most of all my faith. I want to dig in and stand a little taller because I know who I am. I want to grow deeper in our friendships, deeper into our financial goals so we can give radically, and deeper in the way we serve others. I want our clients to feel so loved and taken care of. And we want to help other photographers change their businesses and really their lives from being able to do what they love with more success than they ever have before. I don’t want to build our platform because it has followers, instead, I want to build a platform that is worth following. Because it helps people. We want to love audaciously. Give abundantly. And dream bigger than we ever have before.

And for me, all of that goes back to this word rooted.

So tell me, what do YOU want your new year to feel like? What is your word?