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On Track With Your 2025 Goals? Time for a Mid-Year Review · The Matriarchy Would Never | A Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast Series

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, CEOs.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Rachel Cook here, host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast and founder of the CEO Collective.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is about the middle of May, and usually I do this episode more in June.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: But over the last few years, I have noticed this effect that has been termed on the internet's May Sember.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are a parent right now with kids in school, then you are probably super familiar with May Sumber, where there is so much happening in the month of May.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Your kids are headed towards the last of the school year.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that means there is so much going on, there is so much on your plate that you kind of feel like you're scrambling to get it all done and to handle everything, to have your kids prepared for whatever special day they have deemed it, whatever outfit they need, or whatever party they're gonna have in class, or if your kids are a little older like mine are, maybe you have kids who are stressing out about final exams and final papers due and final projects they have to finish up.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So May can be kind of a tricky month.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're in that boat with me, then you probably are like, okay, I need to start looking ahead for the rest of the year because once these kids are home again, things are going to change, especially if you are a working parent.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe you're not a working parent, maybe those examples don't particularly relate to you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, I know a lot of people right now have just felt like this year has been so up and down.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: There has been so much going on that has been completely out of our control.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the plan we had at the beginning of the year simply isn't still the plan.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like things have changed and we need to adapt and adjust.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if having these time periods, these kind of milestones throughout the year where you're sitting down and really reviewing your plan so that you can adapt and adjust, if you don't have that built into your operating system, the way that you're running your business, then what tends to happen is we just abandon the plan altogether, but we don't really replace it with a strategic plan.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: We just kind of keep going through the motions and then wonder why things aren't going as we thought they would.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a huge part of the way that we run things here at the CEO Collective.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a huge part of our entire 90-day CEO operating system framework, is having these points throughout the year where you're checking in against your plan and you're giving yourself time to adapt and adjust as needed.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're giving yourself opportunity to make those changes really intentionally and thoughtfully before you know you're just running on default instead of intentionally taking your business where you want it to go over the coming months.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, today I want to go through our mid-year review process.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a workbook that will go along with this episode.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you head over to the show notes.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The link in the show notes will give you access to download the mid-year review workbook.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise this is one of those things that seems really simple, but can be so helpful in making sure that you're staying on track for the rest of the year or you're making the adjustments you need to make right now before the kids are home from school, before you are facing summer vacations or sometimes a summer slowdown in a lot of different industries.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing we want to do during a mid-year review is pull up your goals and your strategy that you created for this year.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you have gone through our plan your best year ever challenge, which by the way is still available for free on the website, then you have a plan that you put in place.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know what you're selling, when you're selling it, what you're marketing, when you're marketing it.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have a game plan of what this year was going to look like.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing we need to do is pull that up.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: We need to look at that and we need to pull up our goals that we had written out for 2025.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is so important and this is such a crucial first step because I often find a lot of entrepreneurs are walking around with their plan in their head and they don't actually have a document that they're checking in with and that they're using every single week to help them make decisions, to help them figure out what they need to tackle next.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a recipe for a lot of frustration when your business starts to feel even more out of control.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and find those things.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you didn't have them, okay, if you didn't go through plan your best year ever with me, it's okay.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can still go through it, or you can just sit down and write down for yourself, okay, what were my top goals going into this year?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: What were the goals I had set for myself?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I always have at least um or approximately five goals for the year in my plan for the year.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep these in a Google document that I go back to every single quarter, every single week, every single CEO date, I'm looking back at my goals for the year.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really helpful for me because I can track if I am on track or off track with these particular goals.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of goals that you might have are going to be things like revenue goals.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Totally okay.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some goals you have might be action-oriented goals, so things that you have more control over.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we really encourage our clients to do here at the CEO Collective is focus on the goals that are about what activities you are doing, what actions you are taking that will lead to the revenue that you're looking for.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, one of my goals for 2025 is to publish 52 episodes of Promote Yourself to CEO.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: That means every quarter I need to have about 13 episodes go out.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Every week, an episode should be going out.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is a goal that I can really own because whether or not it happens is 100% up to me, right?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm going to have a weekly podcast and I set a goal for myself to have that podcast weekly, and then every single week I'm making sure I'm following my systems so that that episode goes out, I can very quickly tell whether I am on track or off track.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna share with you some of my own reflections as I'm going through my own mid-year review because of course this has been a challenging year.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: There have been a lot of ups and downs, there's been a lot of uncertainties, and that's both in the world.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, a lot of us in our businesses, our business is going to be responding to what is happening in the world, what's happening in our economy, um, what's happening generally with how people are feeling about, you know, consumer confidence overall, how it changes buyer behavior.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things are intertwined.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then I've had like a lot happening on the personal front in the last few months, which means I've actually realized that some of the goals I had set for myself, while in prior years I had the capacity to do those without much issue, like putting on an episode every single week.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, things change here sometimes.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, you didn't get an episode from me last week.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just wrote a newsletter, and the reason you didn't get an episode from me is because we had to put our sweet Savannah, our 18-year-old cocker spaniel, we had to let her go.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was time.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: She, you know, regressed very, very quickly.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: She had a lot of seizures over the past weekend.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that was devastating for my family because we've had her our entire marriage.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: There, she's been there as long as my, you know, longer than my kids, because she was made it to 18.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Her birthday was April 6th.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so she made it to 18 years old.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that was probably more devastating than I thought it would be.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's just a small example of like things happen sometimes that can really derail us from our goals.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that just meant one episode didn't go out.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm okay with that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm okay with giving myself grace and permission to be off one episode because I know over the grand scale of the year, um, if I only have 50 episodes going out instead of 52, it's okay.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: My goal is always to be able to do at least 80% of what I set my mind to.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that gives me permission to take the pressure off when I need to take the pressure off, right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share that with you because maybe you're looking over your goals and thinking, okay, did I achieve this goal?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna publish this many podcast episodes, or I was gonna write this many newsletters, or I was gonna promote um this many offers over the last few months.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you got 80% or above, I really want you to be okay with that.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself grace.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to be perfect in order to have a successful business.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Perfection is not required.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Adhering to the plan 100%, I actually feel is a little unrealistic.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to take the pressure off because the reality is life is gonna life.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe some of the initial goals you set for the year, maybe they took a little longer to get up and running.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, another example out of my goals, one of my goals with my attract marketing strategy was to get ads in place for our fired up and focused challenge, which is a free five-day challenge we run to help with productivity and teach some of the habits that we teach our clients here in the CEO collective.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have been working on getting these ads up since February, right?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in the past, in the in past years, where maybe things weren't so crazy in the world, maybe I wasn't feeling so, you know, stretched thin in general, I would have had all of those ads ready to go, all the creative ready to go, all of the videos ready to go, all the copy ready to go.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I would have had it up within a month.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And things just slowed me down this year.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Things just slowed me down.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: It took longer to get the creative done.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: It took longer to get everything up and loaded.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: We like to do some testing before, so it took a while to get all the testing done.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then Facebook disabled my ad account because of a payment issue, and it was stuck for about a month before I guess I finally wore them down with all the support requests that they sent somebody to talk to me or they let me talk to an actual human.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we finally got them up just now in May.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it went from a goal I had that I thought would be done within a month or two, to now taking, you know, much longer, nearly three and a half months, to get up and running.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm okay with that because I recognize that there were things that happening that some of those things were a little out of my control.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I also really believe in giving myself grace as a business owner, right?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is so important, especially this year, to say it's okay if things took a little longer.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay if you had to reduce your frequency because you simply didn't have the capacity to do everything.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay if you did a more simplified version of something because that was what was available to you, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was what felt like the path of least resistance in this particular season of your business.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to go through all of your top goals for the year.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Again, not just your revenue goal.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Revenue is important, but if you're only looking at the revenue goal and you're not looking at like what were your goals with your marketing, what were your goals with your sales activity?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: What were your goals with delivery or your operations inside of your business, how you actually deliver your product, program, or service?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have goals for those things, you just have a massive list of to-dos, but you haven't really sat down to make it check-offable to make it make sense for what your business needs to really start building what we call our client growth engine, then you'll find yourself feeling like really, really overwhelmed when it comes to making decisions about the future.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, as I look at my goals, like I said, I like to set my goals so that they are action-oriented.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just shared two of my marketing goals, my attract marketing goal with getting Facebook ads up.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: That one was a huge one.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: They are up and running.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that goal is now in process.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like we've made a lot more progress in the last couple of weeks because it was kind of stalled on us.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: My engage goal, so all of the content that I have available for people to join our community and to learn more about working with us, I actually spent a lot of time in the first um few months of the year going through and auditing them and refining them, re-recording all of the fired up and focused challenge.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel pretty good about my overall engaged goal for the year.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, nurture goal, like I said, I didn't produce as much content as I had wanted last week.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just got derailed and didn't have it in me to sit down and record a podcast.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I haven't been publishing as much on social media.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've just been giving myself permission to not put the pressure on myself.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I publish enough content.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have enough going out every single week that if I need to scale back in one area, for me, it was, you know, missing a podcast episode.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also been scaling back how much I'm on social media just because I don't have the capacity for it right this moment.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm still doing the basics of my strategy, which for me always comes down to podcast, newsletter.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those are always going to happen.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so even when I didn't get the podcast out, I still got a newsletter out.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I still got an email out to stay connected to people.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the next goals that I set for myself are always going to be around what am I selling, right?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are the things that I'm selling?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a game plan every month to be selling something.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a fun one for me because I I have a pretty locked-in rinse and repeat strategy for this.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are very, very consistent.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: You will see we will promote the CEO retreat.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're actively promoting the next CEO retreat right now.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then we will promote the CEO collective, and then I will sometimes drop something else in there.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this year I actually dropped in a marketing without social media masterclass in February, and it was hugely successful.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel good about maybe dropping in some smaller bite-sized workshops.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I feel on track with that goal.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And my fifth goal for the year is around delivery and our internal systems for delivering the CEO retreat, the CEO collective, really evaluating every piece of that puzzle.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like the first half of that of this year has really been me jumping back in and reviewing every single system we have to deliver the programs and the services that we deliver the way that I want to deliver them.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say right now, the CEO retreat, I updated all of our SOPs.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I reviewed all the contracts for where we had been hosting the CEO retreat.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I made some changes because we found this year that fewer people are wanting to travel right now.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in our March retreat, we definitely saw a major swing.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: We used to have a lot more people show up for our in-person retreat.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: We ended up with about 50 on our virtual and just a handful registered for our in-person retreat.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, you know what?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to put myself in a situation where I have, you know, signed up for a location to host this retreat and all of the extra bells and whistles.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: How can I make this more cozy and feel more aligned with where we are right now?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why these little check-ins are so important.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at the goal, I'm looking at what happened and able to make better decisions moving forward.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to all the internal systems for the CEO collective, we have really gone in and started looking at a lot of these because there were things that when you run a program like this, when you um really run any offer, you will have a system in place and it'll work for a while, but sometimes parts of that system are no longer necessary or they're more complicated than they need to be.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So having this time to like review and audit those things so that we can improve it was a huge win.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still not done with that.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I would say I'm still probably around 60, 70% um through what I'm trying to review and go through and upgrade and update.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I have no doubt that by the time I hit the end of June, I will have done a lot of these big things that I wanted um to make happen.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking at my top goals, I'm asking myself, where am I?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: How close am I to getting those things done?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then I like to go month by month in my mid-year review.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I like to go month by month, one, because this is important data that over time, especially the longer you're in business, you will start to see trends in your business.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go month by month, you can also not only see trends like the seasonality your business faces, but you can also see like trends of what's happening in your specific market right now, what's happening in your industry, what's happening in your space.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're able to identify if something is changing that's abnormal or different from what it was the year before.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when I go through each month, I'm asking myself a few questions.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: One, what was the total revenue collected that month?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I am going with revenue collected, not things that you have sold and you haven't collected that revenue on.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wanting to know like how much revenue came into your business, not how much revenue was promised, not how much total payment plans.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's not been collected yet, right?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we just want to know what actually came in the door.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is a really important number.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not looking at revenue every single month, if you're not looking at changes um year to year, like if you look at January's revenue and compare it to last January's revenue, that's really important information.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: That can help you see if there's changes happening that you need to be attuned to.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: You also want to look at month to month.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: That can also tell you like was January's revenue radically different from February's revenue or radically different from December's revenue?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why was that?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: You want to start seeing these things consistently because that's how you understand the patterns in your business, and that's how you can more easily predict what's going to happen next.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to know what was your total revenue every month: January, February, March, April, at the end of May, you'll write in your total revenue.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of June, you'll write in your total revenue.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're starting this in May, there's in the workbook spaces for you to fill out for May and June.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just find that going through this process helps me to laser in on what's working for my business again, before the kids are home, before we're going on summer vacations, before the schedule gets a little bit more disruptive again.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So each month after I look at total revenue coming in, then I'm gonna ask myself, what drove that revenue?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is that revenue level the way it is?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: This could be, you know, maybe you did a promotion, maybe you had something that sold really well, maybe you had a client who renewed, maybe you had a lot of people paid in full versus take a payment plan.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these are important pieces of data.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my highest revenue months right now aren't necessarily coming because of a big launch.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I will often have really great months because people are renewing.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're staying with us for the CEO collective for another year, or they'll decide to pay off a balance, or they'll decide to pay in full.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So this is important information to keep track of, right?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because not everything is just new client revenue.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of small businesses are only focusing on new client revenue and not looking at other revenue coming in from existing clients or former clients who are coming back to you again.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, you can think revenue is just revenue, but knowing where it's coming from, I think is really, really important information that you want to be looking at every single month.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: You might be surprised if you had a month that was like a high revenue month and maybe you weren't actively selling anything or actively doing a big promotion, but other things were happening behind the scenes, it kind of all added up for you.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the third question we're gonna look at is what was your focus for that particular month?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this one takes a little bit of effort.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: You might have to um go through your calendar, you might have to go through your notebook, you might have to go through your um project management system, whatever that might be, and look at what were you spending your time and energy on that particular month?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: What was your focus?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is really important because sometimes we see results pretty quickly, right?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you ran a promotion for a big offer, maybe you launched something, maybe you enrolled a lot of people into a program that you run.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: That can often have very fast results, right?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: You start inviting people within a couple of weeks, they start signing up and purchasing from you.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: But your focus might have been further ahead in that client growth engine journey.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been, well, I wasn't actively selling something, but my focus this month was really on nurturing people and warming them up because the next month I was gonna buy some or I was gonna promote something, sell something for them to buy.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it could have been either even further ahead.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I went on a visibility sprint, and I know those people might not turn into clients right away, but that will start paying off over the next few months.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Paying attention to the correlation between where you're putting your time and energy and the types of things that you're working on and when those results show up is another really, really valuable.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Piece of information.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to ask those three questions for every single month, right?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to look at my total revenue for that month, where'd that revenue come from?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: What drove it?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then what was my focus?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: What was I actively doing that particular month?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I can start to see cause and effect, right?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I can start to see the correlation between where I'm putting my time and energy and when those results show up.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: So once you do those steps, you ask yourself those questions for each month.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're gonna analyze things a little bit more.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where we really dig into the review part of the year in review.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have some data, now we have some information, we have some context to look at.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now we can ask ourselves some important questions that will help us to make better decisions moving forward, might help us adapt and adjust the plan as needed.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the first question is what worked so far this year?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: What worked so far this year?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: What offers were the most profitable?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um what marketing strategies worked the best?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: What experiment did you run that paid off?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: What worked for you so far this year?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, if I'm answering this, one of the things that really worked for us this year was running a small workshop called Marketing Without Social Media.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm about to put it as an on-demand workshop because I felt like this was addressing a need that I was directly hearing from clients.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was directly hearing from people who were tired of social media, they personally didn't want to be on it anymore.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: They felt like it was just taking a ton of time and energy, and they could not point to clients finding them through it.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we put up a little workshop.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a training I've taught inside of the CEO collective.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really easy for me to zhuzh it a little bit and put it out there.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people were excited about it and signed up for it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a great experiment for me that worked the first half of 2025.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it helped me kind of confirm to myself that as things are shifting a little bit in the world, in the economy, and how people feel about making purchasing decisions right now, that sometimes pulling something out of an existing offer and making it a standalone, making it like a little mini offer or bite-sized offer could be a great way to let people get to know you even more, especially if they're taking a little longer to make the bigger buying decisions about bigger, more comprehensive programs that you offer.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a good what worked for me so far this year.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: The next question is what flopped?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: What didn't work?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what offerings didn't work?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: What marketing strategies didn't sell anything?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: What just did not work for you this year?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, interesting for me right now, I would say the biggest things that didn't work weren't the sales and marketing related activities or delivery, really.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think what hasn't worked for me is this is more on my leadership, right?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: My own personal leadership is that I am usually really, really good about estimating my capacity because I've done so much work here of understanding my capacity, understanding how much time, energy, attention I have, understanding my emotional capacity, my mental capacity.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've really had to dial in on this over, I don't know, how many years now?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: 17, 16, 17, 18 years, I can't even remember.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Since having a business since 2008, I've had to be really purposeful and intentional with managing my capacity.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: But this year, just so much was happening all at the same time, even though I was still doing the things to maintain my capacity, things like taking care of myself, making sure I'm prioritizing my own self-care, making sure I'm pouring back into myself, making sure I'm resourced and have support, the support system I need.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was finding though that I was slowing down and needing to take more time than I had in previous, you know, periods of running this business.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: So right now, you might be feeling the same when we are going through so much uncertainty.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to not adjust our capacity, right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: We think we can operate the way we did prior to these things happening.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So in addition to all these things happening, I've been going through just a lot of grief processing.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've lost some people.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: I shared I lost my dog, but even before that, I'm still processing a lot of the grief for losing my cousin.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And some of those things just kind of build up, and you never know if you've ever gone through grief.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: You never know when you're gonna have a moment where it just takes you out.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had to really, really give myself a lot of grace and permission to slow down and permission to be okay with things taking longer than I think they should take.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that I can't compare how I could do things a year ago to how I can do things right in this moment today, right?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, that was what has flopped is trying to operate as if I still have the capacity I did a year ago.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right now I've had to slow things down, be very intentional, work on, you know, resourcing myself, supporting myself, etc.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what got in my way?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: What got in your way the first half of this year?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is important just to give yourself context because I think it's really easy when we are reviewing things, we don't think about the context in which we are living and operating and running our businesses, right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to think about the context.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: What is happening in your context that held you back from getting the results you wanted, that slowed you down?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is really important to consider.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Any time sucks, any energy sucks, any attention sucks.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are there things that are happening right now, whether it's in the macro, you know, happening in the world or in your micro where it's what's happening in your own life that have taken, you know, something away where you just didn't have the capacity or energy or ability to do what it is you wanted to do.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: There could be other things that get in your way.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you were getting ready to do a big promotion for something and it just didn't go the way you wanted.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something happened.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: You had a big snafu.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Goodness knows, like I said, having Facebook shut down my ads account for a month and a half got in my way.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: That slowed me down, that was completely out of my control.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: But when I put this down on my review and I have context, I find it really helps me again to be more intentional and not be as harsh on myself because that was out of my control.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was not as much that I could do when it comes to that.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something I really want more of us to be talking about.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can we give ourselves more self-compassion and not beat ourselves up when there are so many other factors at play beyond your ability to just sit down and lock in and get work done, right?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are other factors at play that are going to impact you, your life, and your business.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure we're being really honest about that so that we can figure out a way to work with it instead of fighting it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: The next questions I want you to think about: what is your leading metric that drives revenue and results for your business?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is an important question.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Again, like I said at the very beginning, if all we're tracking is revenue, if the only goal you really have in mind is your revenue goal, but you aren't clear on what leads to the revenue, if you don't have a client growth engine in place where you can tell pretty predictably if I want X number of clients to hire me for this particular product, program, or service and spend this much money with me, that is the outcome that we're looking for.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is the lagging metric.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: But what leads to those clients getting to you, right?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: What is the leading predictor of the revenue?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: That leading predictor could be the number of requests for consult that you get a month.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: It could be the number of requests for proposals.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it could be you putting in proposals.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it could be referrals coming into you.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it could be people requesting content.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Usually these are the leading indicators I am tracking because that is the first indication of a potential client who's essentially raising their hand and saying, I want to learn more.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're able to get into that nurture stage of marketing where you're able to educate them more about what it is that you do, you're able to let them get to know you and your team and your business a little more, and then they can make a decision on whether or not they want to work with you, right?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm always looking at what was my requests for consult?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: What were my requests for content?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are people actively indicating that they are interested in working with us?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is the leading indicator I want to track.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to take a look at that because if you're not tracking that, then how can you predict the outcome?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not tracking how many requests for consult, this is a big one with a lot of my clients.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna specifically talk about this.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't know how many consults you need in order to get the number of clients you need, you need to figure that information out.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how I would approach that for a lot of people, a lot of small businesses.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you want to get four clients a month and you sell to them through a consultation process, a sales consultation process.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And out of every conversation you have, um one, every like 50% of them, let's say, say yes and hire you.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say this is an important thing to track, you know, how many people say yes versus how many people say no.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: That way we know how effective you are on that sales consultation call.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: But let's say if 50% are saying yes and you want four clients a month to say yes, that means the leading indicator is I need to have eight consults on my calendar a month.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I need to get eight consults on my calendar.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that way you can actually track and see, okay, we're already, you know, halfway through the month, have I had at least three to four consults?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I have up to eight already on my calendar?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I need to proactively do some things to get those consults coming in, right?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to be tracking your leading and lagging metrics.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you do not know what they are, if you can't predictably tell where the clients are going to come from, then you need a client growth engine and you need a system in place to make sure that you have that data, you have that information.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, final big question here in the review section, and that is what will help you close the gap between where you are right now at the time that you're doing your mid-year review and the end of the year?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say that 2025, um, this is a year where you might need to adjust a little bit.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm hearing from a lot of people that what they thought this year was going to look like is already just drastically different.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: So they're having to do a little bit more adapting and adjusting.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: They might be doing a little pivot in their business, they might be making some very intentional decisions in their business.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that might mean making those moves will actually reduce revenue in the short term or change up, you know, how revenue is coming into them.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to be thinking not just how do I need to close the gap, right?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: But also what needs to change in order to get to where I want to go.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you adjust your revenue goal, maybe you decide to keep the same revenue goal.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, whatever works for you, whatever you really want to do here, doesn't hurt my feelings, what you choose, but decide what do you want to be aiming for the second half of the year and what needs to change?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do you need to adapt and adjust in order to do that?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the final part of the year in review, especially if you go download the workbook, is to just map out the second half of the year.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're mapping this out, I'm not talking about nitty-gritty, you know, detail yet.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about let's have a nice big picture look month by month on what the priorities are gonna be through the end of the year.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a few things I'm looking at as we're looking each month.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: One is what are you selling this month?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: What are you selling this month?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: What product, program, or service are you actively selling this month?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know some people are gonna say, well, I have lots of things available for sale.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: But even businesses that have a lot of things for sale will focus in on specific offers.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, think of right now we're going into the summer months.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot walk into a store without them focusing and highlighting on things related to summer.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: If I go to the grocery store right now, there is a seasonal aisle and they are talking all things related to summer.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: I can get beach chairs, I can get um plastic cups that can go outside, I can get umbrellas, I can get all sorts of, you know, outdoor games and sports things.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: If I go down the aisles of the grocery store, I'm starting to see things for like cookouts, I'm starting to see things for summer food that people like to have on the weekends.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so think like that.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Think like a magazine, think like a store.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: What are they focused on right now?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they might have a lot of those things available all the time, but throughout the year, if you're selling the same things all the time, you want to highlight individual things and make them super, super relevant to that particular time of the year.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: So what are you selling each month?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: If it's the same offer that you always sell, what is the reason that it's relevant right this moment?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, each month.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then we want to reverse engineer here.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are you gonna focus on selling?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: How are you marketing that thing?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is your marketing game plan there?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are you going to nurture those people so that they are excited about your particular offer?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you just drop a, hey, this is available right now, but they haven't heard from you, they haven't gotten any information from you, maybe they need some more education, maybe they need to have some questions answered.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't been doing any marketing leading up to that, then it probably will just slip through the cracks, right?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: We need to warm people up before we promote a lot of things, especially higher ticket products, programs, and services.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: How many sales do you want to get from this particular offer?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you have a goal there of how many people you want to invite in?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is really important because again, capacity, especially those of you who are service providers, you can't just say, hey, I have I have availability for websites if you're a website designer and just leave it open-ended.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be really clear about how many websites can you actually take on that month?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when will they start?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: How much capacity do you need to onboard each client and to get them going?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: You might realize you have to say, oh, I can realistically only onboard two clients a month.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I need to be very clear.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have availability for two clients this month, two clients the next month, two clients after that, and I'm going to sell those people, right?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's my goal is to have two sales per month.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's more than that, I'm gonna start scheduling them out.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start giving them start dates for the following months.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, what's the goal revenue gonna look like?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is also really important, okay?
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: We need to make sure we're clear about what that goal revenue is and tie it to the sales goals that we have.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure we're really clear about what revenue we want, how many people we need to bring into our business, and you also might be looking at how much revenue you already have on the way.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you have people who have payment plans with you, maybe you have um clients who already are paying you on an ongoing basis.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: That is great.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: You want to know what is the revenue coming in this month already?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: What new revenue do I need to get in order to achieve my revenue goals?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this was helpful for you.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: As you can tell, I've been looking down at my workbook here for your mid-year review.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: I find that this is an easy practice and it it just takes a little bit of time to get grounded in what's happening right now in your business.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can make better decisions.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're wrapping up today's episode, I want to let you know that the next CEO retreat is coming up.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really the cornerstone of our 90-day CEO operating system.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our way of planning is a little different than how most people plan because it is built around making sure your client growth engine is in place and running very smoothly, rinse and repeat, where you know exactly what things need to look like each step of the way so that you can more predictably grow your business.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then we start firing up that team growth engine and make sure that your team is able to start taking over elements of your client growth engine and operations of your business so that you can stay focused on the bigger picture.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the next retreats are coming up very soon.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have Early Bird happening right now.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can grab a ticket at a discounted rate for either in person or virtual.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: We only have a few seats available in person because our members of the collective get first dibs.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are interested in attending one of the June retreats, make sure you head over to the CEO Collective.com slash retreat.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you can sign up claim your early bird ticket before early bird ends at the end of May.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: We would love to see you there.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this episode, please head over to social, chat with me, let me know your ajas and your insights.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would love, love, love to hear from you.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love hearing that you guys are listening to the podcast.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love seeing so many people finding the full video over on YouTube.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: That has been an adventure for me.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: A lot to learn and a lot that we are doing very imperfectly just to try to test out YouTube as a platform again.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I love when you all connect with me and let me know how these things are landing for you.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know also what else do you want to hear from me on promote yourself to CEO?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be asking this to the email list as well.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know what do you want me to be talking about?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm hearing a lot of different conversations inside of the collective, which is why I'm doing these episodes more timely, more in the moment, um, instead of batching them well in advance.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do know there's a lot happening and what worked even a year ago doesn't always land right now.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to make sure I'm making this as useful and as relevant as possible for you.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I hope you have a great one, and I'll see you in the next episode.