We’re asking: how are you feeling? how have you done on the goals you set yourself? are you happy with your results – why, or why not? What do you want to ‘stop, start and continue’ as we go into the next six months? What new goals do you want to set yourself? And what support will you need to achieve those goals?
*Resources mentioned during the episode*
Get private mentoring for your business– Partnering with a business coach can help you see those blind spots and get both external accountability and expert guidance to take your business to where you want it to be. www.onestepoutside.com/freeconsultation
Up-level with The Outsiders Business Accelerator – This is a mastermind for entrepreneurs, freelancers and small business owners who want to create a long-term sustainable brand and business. www.onestepoutside.com/accelerate
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A mid-year business review
Transcript:
Hello there and welcome back as we enter a new month, and so enter the second half of this year, the second half of 2020. And I thought it would be good opportunity to check in with you, check in with all of us really as to how we’re doing now that we’re halfway through the year. Now you, as I have, I’m sure have seen the memes about 2020 being cancelled. We thought last year was bad, this year is awful, forget about it as a write off and so on.
And I hope you don’t share that sentiment, and if you do now is an opportunity to maybe reevaluate that and think about how we want to head into the second half of the year. Of course, in terms of how we’re thinking about it, but then also in practical terms what we’re doing. And so really want to look at how we can celebrate the wins because everybody has wins. You have succeeded with something, you may not have succeeded with the goal you’d originally set yourself, but you certainly succeeded in surviving so far if nothing else, if you’re listening to this episode, you’re still committed to your personal development. If you’re still listening to this podcast and so on, right? So there are always things that you’re doing very well with even if you think things have been really tough. And so it’s really important to look at those wins. Of course, we’re not looking at this with rose tinted glasses.
We need to recognise the challenges, both personal and global and then reevaluate our priorities for the next half of the year. Now, of course, it’s impossible not to mention the dreaded C word, the dreaded COVID and maybe your whole plan has been completely thrown off. I know some of you in my Facebook Group have been saying, “Anna, look, I’m not even able to look at this stuff. I’m checking in now and then, but I’m just focusing on surviving right now.”
So if you’re juggling a full time job with kids at home, if your job has really stepped up now, because of everything that’s happening, if you’ve had to reevaluate your income and so on because you’ve been furloughed, things are under risk, you have been made redundant even and of course, many of you are running your own businesses already and if you found that that’s been impacted through what’s been happening, then of course, you’ve had your hands full. Now, if you are out of that bleak survival mode now, then now a great opportunity to reevaluate for the next half.
I mean now reassess a little bit ambitious, yes, but still be very reasonable and not push yourself too much.
However, if you’re still there, if you’re still in that survival mode, that is okay, please just do what you have to do by all means, keep listening. I’m a big fan of even when I’m crazy busy or I’m not well or I’ve got my hands full with my daughter and so on, I like to at least listen to podcasts and maybe watch a training now and then read a book.
And so I’m at least keeping that one foot in the business sphere and personal development and hopefully if you can at least do that go for a walk, have a listen to one of these episodes, read a book when you have a bit of a break or whatever it is. So if you can at least keep taking those little steps, then I really encourage you to do so. But again do what you need to do no pressure from me or from anyone else.
These are pretty strange circumstances and we’ve all had to respond in our own way. So if that’s, you please don’t feel the pressure from again from me or from anyone else to now suddenly publish a book and launch a podcast and double your income in the second half of the year. Now, in terms of COVID and so on there are lots of resources now that I’ve created in the past month.
So it started a few months ago with a series, I suppose, on looking at the business model, strategies, marketing and so on through the lens of COVID. Now these will still be very much relevant in the future because they’re all very much evergreen topics, but they have been all the more important I think, during this Corona and the uncertainty. So if you haven’t listened, I’d really encourage you to go back and listen, check out the podcast episodes. They go back to survival mode.
That was the very first one on short term tactics to prioritise now. Leading in a crisis because there have been opportunities to step up. How to use any downtime effectively? If you have lucky you have some downtime and maybe you’d be furloughed and I know some people have been lucky enough not to have lots of work on. Maybe you’ve been able to then get some stuff done, your business that you’ve been putting off for a long time.
And I talked about creative ways to make money online, how to diversify in your business. That could be really important if part or all of your business has been really affected by Corona and knowing when to pivot, writing a business plan, validating your idea, dealing with curve balls, managing a career identity crisis and bringing together lots of different ideas into coherent brands.
Now, I also want to mention the webinar that I released a few weeks ago on taking control of your career and uncertain times. So you can sign up to that at onestepoutside.com/takecontrol, onestepoutside.com/takecontrol. And I don’t speak specifically about building a business because I have so many resources on that and that’s what I usually talk about.
So it’s more general around dealing with the situation of, for example, having been furloughed, having that uncertainty hadn’t been made redundant and knowing how then you can take control, really take action, build your personal brand network and so on. So do check that out at onestepoutside.com/takecontrol. Now, having said all that and having thrown lots of old resources that you, not old, but recent resources and let’s look at the second half review or rather the review of the first half I suppose of the year.
So grab a pen and paper if you don’t have one already or just have a listen now, a casual listen now and you can come back later. But if you can take notes and just ask yourself the questions, and then again you will want to come back later to sit down in depth and look at this. But first before you even get into reviewing goals and so I just want you to check in with how you’re feeling.
So physically, are you exhausted, are you just feeling really drained and down. I’ve certainly had emotional ups and downs throughout the last few weeks and months.
I probably cried more than I have done in a long time for various reasons. So check in with how you’re feeling emotionally. Are you disappointed, frustrated, on the other hand, are you feeling a renewed commitment?
Are you feeling really proud of yourself for having survived? Have you been sticking to a great exercise regime? You’ve been connecting with nature more and you’ve been maybe doing lots of fun, Zoom calls and quizzes and things with your friends? Are you feeling inspired and you realise now really is the time to change to step things up in my business to add another income stream to my revenue streams and so on.
So really ask yourself and maybe you can do that as I talk to you now first, but check in later, maybe meditate again, maybe go for a walk, have a bath. It’s always nice and ask yourself, how am I actually feeling? Because the first thing to do is acknowledge that and sit with that and think, “Okay.” And of course recognise the challenges, understand why maybe you feel a bit negative but then look at, “Okay, how can I move forward from that?”
So first of all, how are you feeling now? Secondly, hopefully you set yourself some goals at the beginning of the year if not now we can look at setting goals for the second half, but those of you have set goals, whether they were the old school new year’s resolutions or hopefully some more robust goals in terms of your business and in terms of your career, you want to now review those.
And of course the basic question to ask is, have you achieved them or not? Now in my business accelerator with my clients, we check in every quarter, which I think is really important. We set goals for those three months, the 90 day period and then review at the end of each quarter. But certainly now again at the halfway point this is a great opportunity to look at, “Have I achieved them or not?” Now if I have achieved them or haven’t why, why not? So again, you can celebrate the fact that, “Hey, I’m despite everything that’s happened, you have actually done X, Y, Z.”
It was because you really stuck to your plan. You worked with your mentor or coach. You’ve been really following along and you’ve been doing what you needed to do. Now, if not, maybe it was no longer a priority. Maybe it’s not a valid goal for you anymore. Maybe you made a conscious choice and intentional choice to deprioritize that goal and that’s important to recognise too.
There’s no point in being frustrated about not achieving a goal that we actually decided was no longer a goal.
So that’s something to draw a line through and either postpone or scrap all together. Was it that the goal wasn’t meaningful? Was it that you weren’t able because of things outside of your control weren’t able to work towards it? Whether that you didn’t really have a clear plan and what are the reasons why perhaps you didn’t achieve those goals?
And I’ve certainly got I must hold my hand up a couple of things that I put there on my list of goals and some of my priorities where I’ve been dragging my feet a little bit and so this is really my opportunity halfway through to tell myself, “Now, Anna pull yourself together.” I’ve done lots of other things that perhaps weren’t on my priority list which have been important too, but now it’s really, okay.
This is something I’ve said for years as my priority. This is definitely part of this year and I really need to get my act together so there’s a bit of tough love needed as well. So again, reviewing goals you set at the start of the year. If you had revenue goals which again hopefully you do in your business you need to look at those as well and see, “Okay, did I hit my goal? Was I near? Was like completely off and again, was that goal completely invalid or was it way too ambitious was a too low perhaps again, did things happen outside of my control? Did I take the action?”
So I did. I followed my plan and yet I didn’t hit my goal or did I not follow my plan? I didn’t take those actions and therefore it’s not surprising that I didn’t get those clients and so on. And next is to look at what were your wins. And again, these may be some obvious ones. I achieved this goal, I published that, I did this, I got a client and so on. We’ve had some great wins in our various programmes the ones that are outside the nine to five. I had a client who’s just started a couple months ago who’s done incredibly well the last few weeks. And she’s just celebrated her first client after hustling away in contacting lots of people and working on her lead. So that’s really exciting.
So have you got a new client or is it something that you finally got your website out, your first blog post, another couple of clients have been hesitating on something and they finally chose, for example, a course to do to certify as a coach or maybe they finally got that first LinkedIn post out there even though they were really nervous about putting themselves out there and so on. So it could be business related or again it could be just surviving, just staying on top of things, managing to juggle everything alongside your kids, alongside your health, whatever it is. So really look at your wins.
Now, the other side of your wins is not your losses. It’s not the failures, but it’s actually your lessons learned. So really think, “Okay, what have I learned from this?” Both in terms of I’m stronger and more resilient than I thought or actually this goal wasn’t right for me. I didn’t know what I was doing here. Maybe I need to ask for some help there. I wasn’t able to stick this plan to maybe my plan was too ambitious.
I didn’t consider X, Y, Z and so. So really what were your lessons learned? And then finally and this is the framework we used to do in my corporate days. We used to use the stop, start and continue. So what are the actions that you have been taking that you want to stop doing? So either their actual physical or stress, strategic actions, tactics that you’ve been taking that haven’t had any impact or maybe they’re things like wasting time on social media, bingeing on Netflix every evening and was like, right.
So are there things you want to stop doing. Then what are the things that you want to start doing? So my goal that I had is this and I really need to take X, Y, Z actions in order to achieve that goal. Maybe I need to be better at following up with my leads, prospective clients. Maybe I want to sign up with that coach who I was hesitating about before. Maybe I want to start putting myself out there on LinkedIn, whatever that looks like. So what are the actions I want to start taking?
And then also we’re going to continue. So there are bound to be some things that have been working for you. Maybe it’s meditating every day, doing yoga, going for a walk first thing in the morning and whatever that looks like for you, maybe you have been showing up in your Facebook group or networking people on LinkedIn, whatever that is that has been working personal or professional. How can you continue doing that?
So stop start, continue. And then finally and I’m getting through this quite quickly. So again, it’s important that you really take the time to sit down and look at this for yourself of but we need to look ahead then to quarter three or rather half, the second half of the year, half, two, can you call it that? So we do now have the next six months.
And I do want to emphasise that I personally believe that we need to focus on our health and wellbeing first and foremost that’s really the foundation. It’s the motto of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. It’s obviously in these current times of Corona it has a very stock specific meaning in terms of our health but also just taking care of ourselves and mentally as well. Again, the most positive among us have had dips and down periods. So we really need to look at taking care of ourselves, making sure we’re getting that fresh air and nature.
We’re lucky now. I think in the summer, at least in the Northern hemisphere with a really lovely weather, we’re opening up a bit more after the lockdowns so we’re able to meet some friends maybe in parks and things. So connecting with friends and family and making sure that we’re feeling well mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually and then also looking at setting yourself career and business goals. So being ambitious, but realistic, if that’s possible, the goal really is to get to the end of the year and feel fulfilled and feel like you haven’t wasted the year.
So it’s so easy to set New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of the year and then by December, like, “Oops, I didn’t quite do that. I didn’t even remember that that was a goal.” Sometimes I find goals that I’ve written that I’ve forgotten that I had. So obviously they weren’t that meaningful and that’s the last thing you want to do. So this is not a write off 2020 is not cancelled. However, small just find something that you can do and in fact, maybe you’re lucky maybe you really feel again, inspired and energised and you do have the time and energy to do something really big.
I had a task the other day that I’d been putting off for weeks and I finally did it one Sunday morning and I felt amazing. And just to think how you’d feel if you could do one of the slightly bigger chunks, maybe that you’ve been really hoping to do. So just get that post out there sign up to a programme, whatever it is, start that yoga meditation practise I keep talking about because I think it’s something that can be really helpful for lots of us.
But again, you just want to make sure that you don’t just put your head in the sand and just forget everything that’s been happening and say, “Oh, there’s nothing I can do.” Because there is something you can do. And I know we all have a different situation, but I think if you’re listening to me now you do at least have those 15 minutes to listen to me. So you certainly have some chunks of time here and there where you can focus on moving forwards.
Now opening up for our outsiders’ business accelerator and I know some of you that I’ve been speaking to in the past few months, really and it’s something I hear often you’ve been saying, “Okay, I’m so committed. I’m absolutely going to sign up to work with you once I have a couple more clients.” And that makes total sense, right? Because of course you need to have the income. You don’t want to stretch yourself and I never want people to feel like they have to put themselves into debt and really stretch themselves too far and the accelerator is a pretty reasonable price.
So price right now in 2020, a £100 a month, shouldn’t be a stretch. If it is, then you definitely need the programme. And so my challenge to you is if you are one of those people who has been saying to yourself to me, I just need a couple more clients, then I’ll sign up, ask yourself, “Okay, do I know how to get those clients?” Because if you’ve now got another three months, another six months and you still haven’t got those clients then you need to work with me or with somebody else.
There’s something you’re doing or not doing isn’t working. So if you’re not sure how to get there, if you’re not sure how to get that income, then we can work together to put in place a plan. Okay, in order to cover this the three months of, let’s say the first three months of accelerator, we need to get you probably less than one client, right to cover that amount. So we can really put that plan together. But please, I want to give you a little bit of tough love as well.
Don’t fall victim of that fallacy of I’ll do it when, because again as coaches have told me in the past, you can’t just drive to the destination and then put the petrol in. You have to put the petrol and you need to know where you’re going. You need the map. You need the skills to be able to drive the car and so on, right? So if you don’t know how to get to where you want to be then please do get in touch, and we can look at the outside as business accelerators in particular. We can potentially work one on one as well, but do get in touch.
But in any case, I hope this was a useful reminder to you that we are halfway through the year, ding dong. We have some time still. We have just as much time and I have a good feeling about the second half of the year. I think it’s going to be a good one. So hopefully you agree. Again, looking back at the goals you set at the start of the year, revenue goals, other development goals, personal, health and wellness goals, what were your wins, and what were your lessons learned? What do you want to stop, start and continue? And then looking ahead to the second half of the year as well, as to what you do want to make sure that you’ve achieved by the end of the year. So best of luck with that. Looking forward to hearing how you get on and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.
Connect with Anna:
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If you’re ready to start to reimagine what success could look like for you, here are some of the ways in which Anna can support you:
Get private mentoring for your business– Partnering with a business coach can help you see those blind spots and get both external accountability and expert guidance to take your business to where you want it to be. www.onestepoutside.com/freeconsultation
Get private career coaching – Individual coaching is fully tailored to your specific goals and desires so we can create the programme that works best for you, with the support that you need to move forwards. www.onestepoutside.com/claritycall
Grab a copy of Leaving the Corporate 9 to 5– After interviewing 50 people who have left the corporate 9 to 5 to forge their own path, Anna has collected their stories in a book that will inspire you with the possibilities that are out there and reassure you that you’re not alone in looking for an alternative. www.leavingthecorporate9to5.com
Join the One Step Outside the 9 to 5 Business Incubator– This is your roadmap to transitioning from a corporate job into setting up a meaningful business that will bring you more freedom, flexibility and fulfilment outside of the corporate 9 to 5. www.onestepoutside.com/9to5
Up-level with The Outsiders Business Accelerator – This is a mastermind for entrepreneurs, freelancers and small business owners who want to create a long-term sustainable brand and business. www.onestepoutside.com/accelerate
