Halfway There: Reviewing and Planning for the Next Six Months

Happy Independence Day! Ever wondered how to turn your mid-year review into a powerful strategy session for the rest of the year? This episode promises to equip you with a step-by-step guide to evaluating your business performance and setting impactful goals for the upcoming months. Whether you're a solopreneur or leading a team, discover how to update your financial records, analyze key metrics, and align your current status with the goals you set at the beginning of the year.

Host Erin takes you through the essentials of scheduling a mid-year meeting, covering everything from profit and loss statements to cash flow analysis and website analytics. Also, learn the importance of setting both business and personal goals and grading yourself from A to F to measure your progress. This episode offers invaluable insights for all entrepreneurs—whether seasoned or just starting out—to ensure your business remains on track and continues to grow. Join us to make the second half of your year the most successful yet!

Thanks for listening! I'm glad you're here.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, and share it with someone who could benefit from what you heard. Also, head over to https://theerinolson.com/links and sign up for the email list, and you can get all the downloadable PDFs and tools! News: We finally have a YouTube channel! Visit us HERE: https://youtube.com/@theerinolson?si=xPNSU1-C7Yt9zXgD

See ya next week!
Erin

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey guys, it's Erin here again with the Quality of Life podcast, where my hope is to help get you from your business idea to big business. Now, at the time of recording this, it is the beginning of July, and first I'd like to say happy Independence Day. I hope you are taking some time to enjoy some of our freedoms that we have with family and friends time to enjoy some of our freedoms that we have with family and friends. And since it is the middle of the year, I want to talk about how it can be a great time to review and plan the second half of the year. Isn't it crazy to think about how fast the first and second quarters have gone? Well, as a business owner or leader, or even as a human in general, now is the time to be strategic with the next six months, so let's make it count. The way that we do this is to schedule a meeting, even as a solopreneur, and spend some time reviewing the last six months and getting a current picture of our status right now and plan the outcomes for the next six months. So let's take a look at how far we've come so far this year. It is review time. I hope that you've been keeping your books up to date, since this is a very necessary data point for this meeting. So if you haven't, oh my goodness, you need to get those numbers up and current so that you have numbers to work with, because, honestly, if you don't have current numbers, how do you know how well you're doing and how do you know how well you can do in the future? So, first things first, get those up to date. Now let's gather all of our stats so that we have all of the facts and figures to look at, to review and plan our quarters three and four effectively.

Speaker 1: 1:47

You're going to want to get together your financial stuff, like your profit and loss, your cash flow statement and your balance sheet, not to mention if you have a budget. We need to take a look at that as well. Also, you should probably get an idea of what you have currently in stock in inventory. This is a great thing to keep in mind so that you can plan moving forward. Also, you're going to want to get together some analytics, like your website traffic, your search engine, any email or meta tracking for social, just to see what your engagement is, and once you get all of those things together, we are going to dig through them and get an idea of how we're doing compared to how we plan to do. And that leads us to the second thing you need for this meeting. You need your goals that you created January 1 or thereabout. So get all of your goals together that you had planned for your business or your personal life.

Speaker 1: 2:39

Now this meeting is for both business and personal. You can do a separate meeting by yourself for your personal and separate it from your business, but honestly, we know as business owners how much these two things can kind of meld together. So I just do it all at one time. I add a whole section about my personal goals and my dreams and see how things are going All right. So now you need to spend a little bit of time going through them all and give yourself a grade, just like in elementary school A to F. I don't even know if they still do this anymore. I don't even have a kid in school anymore. So grade yourself A to F.

Speaker 1: 3:18

How are you doing? How would you compare your numbers to last year? If you have numbers from last year, how does it look? So far, all right. How much growth have you had so far this year? How much growth? How much growth have you had to date?

Speaker 1: 3:33

You need to look at things like how much money you owe people and how much people owe you for money. How much money have you brought in so far this year? Are your sales trending well for the goals that you have made for this year? Are there any inventory items that are not moving as well as you thought they were? I know this is a very common thing. We have great ideas as entrepreneurs about how and what our customer needs, but, honestly, it's our customer that is going to tell us if we made the right decision or not. So sometimes inventory just doesn't move like we hoped it would Do. You have some money owed to you that you could attempt to collect? These are all things that you need to know.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Moving forward, look over how well your emails are converting. If you use Constant Contact or convert kit or even MailChimp. They all have analytics about how many times your emails have been clicked through, and they have tons of analytics to help you decide whether your email marketing is targeting the right customer. How much they've been read, have they been clicked through? All kinds of information that you might have no idea that they have. You also want to check out your YouTube channel, if you have one or videos on your social media, like I said, the meta analytics and also if you have Shopify or any other platform that your website is on. They also have analytics that you can take a look at and this is a great place to give yourself that grade of A to F in how well you're doing and how well your content and your website and your shopping cart all serve your customer. Another thing you can look at that will really help you moving forward is how much growth have you had in your social platforms? Have your numbers grown? Have you had more views per impression? Have your lives or your videos had more views? How about Google reviews? Is this something that your business does, google or Yelp or any of those platforms? Because those reviews and how often you get them really can help give you an idea of what you need to work on and what you're doing right.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Okay, so how do these things look when you compare to your January 1 goals? Are you on track? What is the honest grade that you would give yourself, from A to F? For me personally, I think I'm probably about. If I'm really honest, I'm probably trending at like a, b minus or C plus, which is not great. I need to work on a lot of things, and that's why I have this YouTube channel just started, and if you're not on YouTube and you're listening on Spotify or on Apple podcasts, then you know what. Check my YouTube channel out. Please subscribe and help me reach more people. Now, if you have a team, this is a great time to look over their goals and their performance reviews too. I probably wouldn't actually do the performance reviews in this meeting, but I would schedule them so that you and your employees and your whole team know where they are and where they're going and how to reach that goal. Now I want you to stay here in this moment for just a few minutes, if not a whole day. This is a super important thing for you to really look at. Where are you killing it? Where could you do better? Now I want you to think about the current state of the business or life in general. Are you happy with where you are? Are you in a position to keep on doing the same, or how and where could you take action now to improve? All right, so now that you have looked at all of these things and graded the things that you want to work on and the things that you're doing well.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Now comes the best part planning the next six months. First and foremost, what needs to happen to reach the goals that you set out this year with. Are you even on the path to reaching them? Second, consider your sales, your budgeting, accounting, marketing, all of those things that we just talked about and think if there is a plan that you need to set forth so that you can reach those goals. Three, as far as Q3 and Q4, it would be super helpful to schedule a strategic meeting with your accountant and your bookkeeper. This is something that I failed for years, but, in all honesty, it can be the biggest game changer in how the end of your year pans out. Really. They can help you make good decisions that will help you end the year well, especially if you're in a business where you need to buy equipment or vehicles and you really don't want to wait until December to do it, because, honestly, there's not much left in December and sometimes you hate to rush because you end up spending money on things that you don't really need. So schedule that appointment with your bookkeeper and your accountant. That way, moving forward. Everybody is on the same plan on how to make you the best money and pay the least amount in taxes.

Speaker 1: 8:32

Most businesses do not do this step enough to really pivot if necessary or to double down on what's working. So if you do it, holy crap, you are going to be so much farther ahead than the bulk of the businesses out there. Most businesses don't do this in July. The bulk of the businesses out there, most businesses don't do this in July. July is a time where kids are off school and most business owners are taking a beat to spend time with the family and to do the things and enjoy the weather the way that they've always done it.

Speaker 1: 9:03

But this is where you take a look at what you've been doing and be realistic about what you can do for the rest of the year and, last but not least, take time, if you haven't yet, to schedule things for the rest of the year, like vacation. Have you scheduled a vacation yet this year? I know we just talked about it, but if you haven't put it down on the calendar and schedule around it Also, things like your Christmas party, your team building exercises, any Black Friday sales you're going to do, if you have to order inventory, to get ready for that. This is the time, right now, to plan all that stuff so that when you launch and you take time off, there is no conflict. Planning is so important that even Proverbs 21 5 says that the plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. Don't leave the next half of the month to chance, because then you move with haste and that is definitely not the way to do it. Guys, if you take the time to go over how you're doing, the next six months are going to kick some serious butt.

Speaker 1: 10:17

Ed Milet calls it separation season. It is where most people get caught up in just getting through this season alive, taking their foot off the gas and coasting. But this is where you keep your eyes on the goals that you set out to accomplish and to make the year the best year yet. And just like the Bon Jovi song whoa, we're halfway there. Whoa, living on a prayer Just follow my lead and we will make it, I swear. Well, guys, I hope that this gets you super focused and ready to kick some serious butt this year. Let's go. Please share this show with at least three people who need a reboot for the second half of the year. Also, a review would be much appreciated. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and I will see you next week, see ya.