How to Effectively Reset Mid-Year

Every summer I talk about a mid-year audit. Now if I am being honest I didn’t create this, it is engrained in the corporate world. I used to despise July because it meant two things: I had to write a million reviews (insert I used to have a large, awesome team, but as a director, I had to write pages of feedback. Once we finished reviews we would go straight into planning and budgeting for the next year. My point is that summer was a time of reflection and planning for the year ahead. 

As business owners we should do this as well. 

The Three Steps of Your Mid-Year Audit

I talked about the why and even some questions to ask in this post, but I wanted to give a 2022 spin on the process. Think of your mid-year audit as a three-step process: Reflect, plan, and review. 

If I am being super honest, I did this on vacation in June. I know, it sounds crazy. I packed up my journal and my big white blank wall calendar and threw them in the bottom of my suitcase. When the kids were asleep, I headed out to our patio and listen to the waves hit the harbor, and planned out the next 8-12 months. 

I share this because I HIGHLY recommend you do this in a creative space. Maybe it's your favorite coffee shop. Lately, our local market (which has tables you can eat at) has been mine. I take my whiteboard and meet with clients or get super creative. Before you go any further, take a minute and plan a day or a few hours when you can do this. And just be with your thoughts. 

Celebrate Where You Are

Then start to think about where you are at. 

1. What amazing things do you achieve? 
2. How did you achieve them? 
3. Why did you achieve them? 

This is important because sometimes it is just sheer luck. Other times it is timing and hard work, which is why consistency is so important. If you are consistent the chances of you hitting one of the three are pretty high!

I always think that celebrating how far you have come is a great way to start the brainstorming session. 

Then ask yourself what did you not accomplish. And it’s OK. Dig deeper. 

1. What did you not accomplish? 
2. Why did you not accomplish it? 
3. What can you learn from this? 

Then I like to bring it back full circle. 

1. What has brought you the most joy this year? 
2. Where have you had the most success? 
3. And where have you had the most frustration? 

Just taking time to really reflect is going to bring so much clarity to where you want to go. 

 Facts Not Feelings

After you have reflected, it’s time for "facts not feelings" as I call it, which is digging into finances. We do this for both personal and business, which if I am being honest, looking through our spending categories, I was like "oh my goodness, what do I not order from Amazon?" Awareness is a powerful tool. 

One of my favorite quotes is “being rich means having lots of money, being wealthy is having time”. You can be making 6-7 figures in your business but if you are spending it all, what is the point? You could also be making $1,000 a month, spend none of it and at the end of the year have an extra $12k in savings. 

It's not about making lots of money, it's about knowing how to manage it. At a high level, you should know what you brought in and what you spent. 

 Do you love these tips? Take the Productivity Personality Quiz to get a Netflix-style binge-worthy resource list to help you find your focus and is customized to you! Take the quiz here. 

Time to Plan

Once you have your reflection done and now the review (the facts not the feelings), it is time to plan. I like to go back to brainstorming for this one. 

By the end of the year, where do you want your business to be? What do you want to celebrate? What do you want to have?

Then, the fun part. Back into it. Make it happen. 

Let’s say you want to double your course sales. Tactically speaking that means you need to 4 X your email list. And then plan a launch. How do you do that? Work into it? 

Maybe you want to take two weeks off around the holidays. What are you going to do to get there? How are you going to plan it? 

This is creating the game plan for the rest of the year. 

1. You’ve got the goals
2. If you want to 4 x your list as an example in six months, set mini-deadlines along the way.

How to Break it Down to Be Doable

If you don’t break it down it is going to sound super overwhelming. But if you simply say I am going to add 10 people to my email list each week, which leads to a successful launch, which then leads to the income you need to reach your goal, it is much more doable. See how that works? 

You can then even break out the calendar and for each month have two categories: 

1. Goals to reach
2. Steps to take

Remember, hope is not a strategy. Put some thought into your actions. Use the summer slowness and momentum to dream big. 

Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Count in days, and live in the moment. 

In just a few focused hours you can come up with a vision that can change your life and the action steps to create it. Try it! 

 Looking for more on this topic and your High-Level Action items? Check out the Strategy Lab in the Crush the Rush Club!