Welcome back to our weekly posts, dear followers! It took me a while to go back to the normal working routine after three weeks working at a slower pace, but now things seem to be at full speed. New clients, new projects and endless jobs are taking all of my time these last two weeks, my first working weeks of the year, so I’m totally excited!

I’ll be presenting a webinar next week (stay tuned for more info on my social media), I’m scheduled to take the online course Cultural Studies and Modern Languages: an Introduction, hosted by FutureLearn, next month, and I am trying to follow Marta Stelmaszak’s January Business Camp. Though I’m running late on this last one, I’ll definitely catch up soon. Talk about a hectic beginning of the year, right? Phew!

Speaking on hard work, today I read (and shared) an interesting article in Portuguese. The translation of its title is: 2015 will be a difficult year. As it seems, the GDP in Brazil will increase only a bit (if it increases), inflation will persist, interests will be high… However, the author states that, in a difficult year, those who are real professionals stand out, while only those who are not suffer its consequences. Therefore, we (real professionals) should not worry about it, since nothing changes to us. In an “easy” year, on the other hand, anyone thrives — though it may be more due to luck than to deserving it.

According to Daniel Castello, author of the article, in order to thrive in a difficult year, you need a professional plan that needs to be put in practice with discipline. I’d like to add here that not only in difficulty years should you write a business plan, but every year. Looking back to what you have achieved in the previous year, analyzing what needs to change and what worked, and knowing where you want to be in the new year are essentials steps to growing your business and improving your services. Therefore, if you are already used to doing so every year, a difficult year will be piece of cake to you, as you may only need to adjust a few things here and there.

The good thing about a difficult year is that the customer is more rigorous and demanding. Making mistakes is too expensive, so their investment needs to pay off. Therefore, they will only look for those who innovate, differentiate themselves from their competitors, add value and communicate well. Those who don’t take their jobs seriously and stand out will soon leave room for real professionals who are willing to work hard.

I’m ready for 2015. How about you?