Mmmmmm, the end of the year.

It arrives with a sense of both buoyancy (for me, that sounds like: snowflakes! Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson singing “Winter Song”! those peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate that people from Ohio call Buckeyes!) and of contemplation. The earth is tucked in under a bed of snow (at least in my part of the world), the days are shorter and darker, and here in the Walla Walla Valley (home of The Voice Bureau), we’re lucky if the lavender-y grey opalescent sky gets spangled with sun once in a while.

This is an important time of year for all business owners. Whether you’re a retailer doing end of the year inventory, a consultant sending out reminders for open client invoices, or an artist cleaning out her studio to make space for the new year’s creative work, I think most Voice Bureau readers would agree: that’s not even the half of it.

What our readers and clients tend to be interested in is something much bigger than blueprints, checklists, and best practices for wrapping up a fiscal year.

We’re wanting something deeper. We seek the profound, especially when the profound comes with a sense of gorgeous clarity.

My Collaborative Partner Tami and I have been having lots of these big, seeking, open-ended conversations lately. We’ve been taking a thoughtful inventory of what we created this year, of the clients whose needs and preferences best aligned with the way we best deliver, and of whether (and how) we met our goals for meaningful collaborative and independent work.

We have a lot to be thankful for. And we still have a lot of reflection and consideration to do. We’re still combing through and cataloguing the ease points and the stress points of this past year of business (and of life), and noticing what we wouldn’t repeat, had we a do-over. And of course, naming and celebrating what we’ll take with us into next year, not only because it worked, but because it resonated (with YOU and with us), and because it points to the sweet spot we are both perpetually seeking.

So when Tami brought me the idea for a clean and simple, end-of-the-year Voice Bureau course that would help our readership sort through what worked well (and what didn’t work so well) for them in 2013, I knew both the concept and the timing were right.

If you’d like to join Tami and me in this first-of-its-kind course — no heavy-lifting, we promise — to do the work of bringing closure to 2013 and coming to clarity on 2014, CLICK HERE. We start before Christmas. It’s no-stress, all ingenuity. We think you’ll like it.

(Image credit.)