Hello, my friends. Welcome to Uncomplicating Business. I'm Sara. If you don't know me, I'd love to know you. But today, what I want to talk about is a mid-year business reset. I know that it is August and it is summer, and also I know that so many of you and me, we all sort of work on this teacher brain schedule where the year kind of goes from September to August, and so while I did lots of workshops in June this year that were sort of mid-year reset kinds of things. August into September is often when I do it for myself, and so what I thought would be handy is to walk you through what I am going to do for myself this August, which I think of as my sort of business reset.

 That is business reset without blowing anything up, because that's not the point of the reset. A reset isn't about destruction. It's not about upheaval. It's about you know straightening the piles and vacuuming the floor and cleaning you know fluffing the pillows and reorganizing the cupboard-it's not about full-on construction, and so this is about recalibration. I think is the right word for me and for you. If this is not something you've done before or something you've done yet in this year, this is a really great practice. You can use this honestly any time of year. I tend to, I probably do it twice a year when I'm, but like at thirds. So I tend to do it in August. I tend to do it in January, and then I tend to do it in May. For me, it just sort of works better in that cadence, and I almost feel like six months is too much for me to think through. And so, this is what I'm gonna do. 

This is what I always do for myself. This is what you could do for you too. I always start with what's working and what I make myself do, and this is a make myself do because it's hard for everybody. Is make a success list. I have clients do this a couple of times a year. I always have people sit down and do this in my workshops. We aim for as many successes as you can get down in paper from the last X period of time. So let's say from January through August, as you possibly can manage. And here's what's going to happen: you're going to get to like 10 or even five, and your brain is going to be like, "Nope, there's no more. That's it. But if you sit with it, if you just let it like percolate a little bit, you know, maybe you start this the day before or a couple of days before you actually want to do the full reset. It doesn't take that long. 

This all this part I usually let stew for a day or two, and then I do the rest in like a half hour, because it's not meant to be a full destruction. Remember, so make a list. I usually hold myself to at least 25 things that are working. Some of them are small things. Some of them are big things. Some of them are life things. Some of them are things that went well for a client that I feel like I really helped them do. Some of them are-I mean-they're all over the map. There's no rule. There's simply like what's working right now, and you answer the way you answer. But what you don't do is be like nothing, and skip straight into like let's fix everything because it's not fixing. There is stuff working, and knowing that there are things working is a really good place to start recalibrating from because it decreases your temptation to be like destruct, tear it all down because if you know there's 25 things working, there's much less to tear down. So we start there. Then I will take a look at data. So I will collect, you know, like not a ton of numbers, but you know, revenue to date, number of clients I've helped, number of new connections I've made, number of connections I've made for other people. I'll collect, you know, growth on LinkedIn, growth on TikTok, probably. 

I will collect number of people that attended something I ran like a workshop, and then I'll probably look at growth in my email list because that is a focus for me this year, and that's probably it. Like those are the numbers. Collects the numbers, and it's like, okay, where am I in the numbers, and how does this relate to where I'm trying to get? Right? Is it in relation? Is it ahead? Is it behind? Is it different than I expected? I often also go back and compare it to like year over year data, because and and if you've been in business a couple years, is a really handy thing. I have taught many people about index card revenue data, and if you have a question about what I mean by that? You should send me an email, and I'll explain it to you, because it is the handiest way to keep track of all this. So,  I tend to go to my index cards and be like, okay, in January through August last year, the year before, the year before that, where was I? How did it look? And and by and large, I'm ahead, and so it's like, oh, okay, because when you give data a relationship to connect to, then it's like, oh, it doesn't seem so bad or good. It's like, oh, it's in context, and it's all about keeping things in context. The next thing I'm gonna do is really think about what I'd like to adjust. So based on what's working, what the numbers say. Now what, right? Are there things I want to do more of? Actually, I I trend I tend to think about it as sorry. 

These are columns in my notebook, and they sound silly, but they're really useful to me. It is often like a do more of, do less of, do none of. Right, like that seems silly, but that's kind of what it breaks down to. So what I think about is like, what do I want to do more of? Is it connecting? Is it connecting in a specific place? Is it, you know, spending time with X people, helping in a certain way? Are there things I want to do less of, right? And they might be life things. Like I know the second half of the year, one of the things I really have to do is be a little more consistent in workouts. I had some things early in the summer and spring. I ended up with stitches in my hand. I broke a toe. I I sprained a wrist. I I did a bunch of things that have really slowed me down on the workout front, it's time to sort of get back to consistency, and so in the second half of the year, that's going to be in my do more of list. In my do less of, it's like what are the places that I want to spend a little less time? Where are the you know habits that I I are ingrained and I don't need to think as hard about what are are there people that I want to like kind of let go a little bit, right? What are the things that I don't want to spend as much time on, but still I want to touch? And then there are things that are like I don't want to do that anymore. 

This is that this is the kind of reset where you think to yourself like, okay, I'm in these three groups. Are they what I want right now? Are they serving me? Do I stay? Do I renew? Do I reset? Do I double down? Right, and so everything goes in a column, and then I look at the like, how do I want this all to feel? So I somewhere in this process often before I really decide what I want to let go of and what I want to stop doing. Somewhere in there, I think like, how do I want the next six months to feel? Because and and I it's it feels like it should be a sooner step. 

I often don't get to it until here because I'm collecting the data and I'm seeing what's working, and then it's like, oh, I want to do more of these things, and I get excited, and then it's like, okay, wait, how do I actually want this to feel? Because then it's like, if I want things to feel more energized, that's a certain thing. If I want things to feel more spacious, I'm gonna let go of more. If I want things to feel settled, I'm gonna let go a little differently, right? How do you want it to feel? And then finally, what help do I need, right? Often it's like I'm gonna let go of this thing, but it's still gotta get done. So like, what does that actually mean? Or I'll pick out a pattern that I'll see in the like things I'm trying to let go of, the things I want to do less of, and it's like, oh, you know what I really need is somebody to teach me how to do that differently, or I need coaching, or I need to tell a friend that I'm going to do this and have them hold me accountable to it, right? It's like, what is the accountability I need? What is the help I need? What is the support I need? Do I need a personal trainer? Maybe, right? And maybe just for a little while to get myself reset. Do I need? I don't know. 

Do I need more coaching? Do I need? Membership like the lab, like I'm in something that is LinkedIn focused right now. I'm in Molly Godfried's impression community because one of my goals for the year was to really do more high quality writing on LinkedIn, and that is what that community is about. So that is really continuing to hold my feet to the fire there, so for you it's really, you know, about this. Give yourself a half hour or 40-five minutes to sit and recalibrate, and then think like, okay, where does this take me? Now, if you do this in August, you can say, okay, where does this take me through December? There is sort of a natural cutoff there. I don't tend to use that one because I am a teacher at my core, and December is just another month in the calendar. I don't tend to want to be bound by like the end of the year or the start of the year, just because I turned a page in the calendar, I do that 12 times a year. So for you, your year can start and end whenever you like. If you want to say, okay, I'm resetting in August. I want to check the stuff again in February. 

Amazing, do that. I met with a new client the other day. She and I agreed on a new offer she's created and really going to stick to because part of the problem she's been running into is she keeps changing it, and that is hurting her ability to communicate it. And we decided that she's going to stick with it for a year, and we're going to really poke at it and let her sort of refine it. It's not going to not be refined, but it isn't going to substantively change for a year, and that's really going to matter. So tell yourself when you're going to check back in, schedule it on your calendar, and then do another reset. This podcast episode will still be here. If you have questions, ask. If you want this kind of reset more often, we do this once a month in the lab in a smaller scale. We're going to do an end of the year planning event at the end of the year. We will do more planning events because they're really helpful over the course of the fall. And then I think we're gonna play a game. We played. We just played bingo. We're gonna play another game in, you know, once the school year has started. 

So if you have questions about the lab, I would love to see you in there. If you listen to this podcast and you love it and you haven't taken a second to rate and review it, I would really appreciate you because this is how other people find it, and you know if it's useful for you, it's probably useful for someone else, so I appreciate you, and I'll see you again in two weeks.