[00:00:00] Kristy: What a wild year it has already been. We should be used to the unusual, but here we are finding ourselves in yet another non-typical year. There's just this sense of tiredness for many business owners. For some it's burnout, for others, it's just blah. And as I mentioned in last week's episode, if your energy and mindset is off, it really does impact your actions.

[00:00:29] Which brings me to today's conversation, a business reset. Have you had time to reset your business for the second half of 2023? If not, that's okay because I know for many of you, July ends up being quite the full month. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, of course it's summer, and if you're here in Australia or New Zealand, we've just come through the winter break where loads of people have been traveling or if you've got kids, it's been school holidays and for many other business owners, it's just a really busy time of the year.

[00:01:07] In this kind of June, July period. So if you haven't had a chance to do a business reset, please know it's not too late. It's totally okay. And I've got your back because that's exactly what we're going to cover today.

[00:01:19] before we dive into the conversation, I wanna remind you that very often the second half of the year Is a time for building and upleveling and laying down the groundwork for you to leap from in 2024. So, It's time to get energized. It's time to get focused. And in this conversation I'm gonna guide you through what to include in your mid-year reset, which is designed to get you back on track and ready to tackle those big business goals for the remainder of the year.

[00:01:55] All that and more coming up in this episode. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello, boss and welcome back to the podcast. I Dunno about You. I'm gonna share with you a little secret. I don't know about you, but I am totally obsessed with those reels that are about the home reset. I don't know what it is about those reels, but they get me so excited for me to tackle my Sunday clean and organization and getting ready for the week ahead.

[00:03:01] And it got me thinking about you and the importance of doing a midyear reset for your business. In the same way that having clean linen, sparkly oven, decluttered bench tops, it leaves you feeling invigorated and excited for the week ahead. A business reset can have a similar impact. It can get you connected and inspired for what you wanna achieve for the rest of the year.

[00:03:30] often at the midway point, we can get caught in a little bit of a rut, doing the same things day in, day out. You're just not as excited about the goals that you set for yourself back in January. Or even what it is that you are working on this time of year can leave you questioning, have I achieved enough?

[00:03:50] What have I achieved? And you can feel a little bit derailed by all the events that happened in the first half of the year. But much like a house reset, it's time to get scrubbing. It's time to freshen up your plan and get clear on what it is that you want for the rest of the year. And on the other side of doing this reset, you'll have a fresh perspective of what lies ahead for you and your business. So I've created a five-point reset plan for you, and to make it fun, I've created all R words to tie in with the reset. So how about that?

[00:04:33] Now I know you are keen to get into it. So let's get into the first one, reflection. You have to always begin with examining your business. Whenever I'm working with any of my private coaching clients, we always start with a clear audit of what's going on inside the business. You cannot possibly plan ahead without first identifying the challenges that exist in your business, as well as identifying opportunities that you wanna tap into, And so setting aside time to reflect, to examine and to take an inventory of what's going on in your business is the very first part of your reset. Clarity will come when you are thinking deeply about your business. You need to understand what's working well, what's not for you as a business owner, and don't just do this for your business.

[00:05:36] Do it for your life as well. Because as modern business owners, there's so much over overflow between the life that you wish to live and the business that you have. So, Spend time and reflect on where you are at, how you've tracked against your goals, how your business is performing and functioning, and how things are progressing for you, the business owner.

[00:06:01] And so onto our second agenda item for the business Reset is to reconnect to your purpose. Now, I have a whole episode where I dive into how to break your why down. I talk about the three components of a why your material, why your emotional why and your business why. That is Episode number 80, add power to your purpose, A why process you've never heard before. Now, I'm not going to unpack that in this conversation because I've done, as I said, a whole episode on that. So once you're done with this or write before you're ready to reconnect to your purpose, go and listen to that episode again because that will give you a lot of clarity on where to look and how to create a definition around that.

[00:06:48] But what I wanna say in this conversation about your why is that your why is your fuel, your why is where you draw your energy. It's your reason, it's your purpose. And if you are disconnected from. Your why. You are essentially having no fuel in the tank to go out there and do the work that you need to do to move your business forward.

[00:07:13] And if you have big goals in your business, you need big energy for that. And the big energy is going to start with your why and with your purpose. So, as I said, go and check out episode number 80 because that really breaks down this process of connecting to your material business and emotional why. Okay. So the third agenda item in your business reset is to refine your focus and intentions. Now, there's two parts to this piece. The antidote to overwhelm is focus.

[00:07:49] There's a lot you can do in your business, but if it's just you or maybe even just a small team, you cannot do it all at once. this is why inside of my six month private coaching container, It becomes so powerful and transformative because we get laser focused on doing one thing at a time.

[00:08:10] We're not trying to implement an entire plan in a month or in a week or in a fortnight. We're breaking down the plan and focusing on one thing at a time. So it's really important that you don't try and do all the things at once because you won't really do any of it very well.

[00:08:30] And I'll talk about the plans in a minute, but one more point, when it comes to being laser focused, if you look at all of the greatest leaders in the world, they do not dilute their focus. They are focusing on one thing. In fact, their superpower lies in restraint. So try not to do all the things and get overwhelmed by all the advice and trying not to deliver all the things at the same time, but rather get really focused on what it is that you are looking to achieve over the rest of the year.

[00:09:05] The second part to this piece is around intention. It's time to make a decision. What are your intentions for this year? Here's the thing, so many people don't lay down an intention for what it is that they're wanting to achieve, and what ultimately ends up happening is that you are following momentum or you are just following advice blindly.

[00:09:29] But it's up to you to be really clear around what your intention is for your business and what your intention is for your life, and to focus on that rather than allowing the external to come in and derail things for you.

[00:09:46] Okay, so moving into the third part of your business, reset is to reset your goals and plan. To this point, you've done the reflection, you've reconnected to your purpose, and you've refined your focus and intentions for the remainder of the year. And so these three things are, Going to help inform the goals that you set and the plan that you put in place.

[00:10:12] So as I've mentioned on the podcast a few times, my process for creating a plan for my clients is first looking at that big vision for the business as well as for your life. We then lay down a annual goal. So you could do this from June to June if you like, or if you've already set your annual goal, revisit that from January.

[00:10:32] Then you break that annual goal down into quarterly goals, and that's how you are able to break those really big things that you're looking to achieve in your business and in your life into actionable pieces, and this is going to prevent you from feeling overwhelmed by all the things that you are left to do and action in order to achieve your goals.

[00:10:55] I can't tell you how important it is to have a planning cadence in your business. I've spoken about this a number of times on the podcast. When you don't plan, you won't have a map for your goals, and it's so hard to take actions if you have to recreate the wheel of thinking about what is it that I need to do this week?

[00:11:17] What is it that I need to do over this month? Having a plan gives you that space to sit in. Your strategy and in your planning process, and map out the steps that you need to take to help you to get from where you are today and where you wanna be by the end of the year or by the quarter, or by the end of the period in which you need to achieve your goals.

[00:11:40] Your plan is what's going to keep you on track and focused and taking purposeful action. And this is the same for whether you're a Fortune 500 business or whether you are a solo business owner. The process of creating a plan provides you with clarity, along with confidence of what action to take next.

[00:12:00] Where a lot of people get undone is that they don't have a plan in place and they're just not really sure what to do, and so they just do what they did last week.

[00:12:09] If this is not a strength for you in your business, and if you struggle to stay on track and want my support, This is the work we do upfront in the six month business accelerator coaching program. I work with my clients to help them figure out what that bedrock of their business is, the vision, mission, and values, and then we create their plan, which includes their annual goal, quarterly goal, and also all of the priorities that they need to hit in order to achieve those goals.

[00:12:38] So if you wanna know more about how I could help you with this, head over to kristy robinson.com au, or just head down into the show notes and grab the link there.

[00:12:49] but regardless of whether you have my help or whether you do this on your own, you absolutely need to have a plan in place in order for you to be able to know what to do in order to achieve those goals. The fifth and last agenda item of your business reset is to restructure your time. We all know the importance of creating good habits, and often over time we can start to create maladaptive behaviors that lead to negative habits. Am midyear Refresh is a great opportunity to look at your habits along with how you set up your calendar.

[00:13:33] So I want you to take a moment and think about, you know, what's going on right now for you in terms of habits. Have you been skipping your daily exercise routine? Perhaps it's that at the end of the day, you are regularly having a glass of wine to take the edge off a rough day. Maybe it's that you used to make time every morning to meditate and now you are quickly chugging down a coffee and getting on with your day.

[00:14:00] or maybe it's that you're getting Uber Eats a little more than you would prefer. These are all negative habits. I mention this because it's so easy to let our intentions slip as a business owner, and there's so much crossover between what we do in our life that supports our business and vice versa.

[00:14:23] So, As part of your reset, I encourage you to look at your habits and not just dismiss this as something that's completely irrelevant to your business. Because if you are working from home and if you are an online business owner, I could pretty much guarantee that the habits that you have are definitely impacting or influencing your business performance results.

[00:14:44] Another piece when it comes to, the habits that you're forming is how much you're working. So here's a question for you. Do you find yourself working more than you? Like now you get to decide how many hours a week you're working in your business? I don't think that there's a set number. There's not a gold standard that you should be working for. I aim for around the 25 hours a week, but that's, what works for me and what works for my life and what works for my business. You might be completely different to that, regardless. Are you working more than what you would prefer?

[00:15:19] So let's say you say, I wanna work school hours Monday through Friday, that that's around the 20, 25 hour mark. Or maybe it's that you've got three full days that you can work on your business. Or maybe it's that you can do a 38 hour work week, whatever that looks like. I want you to just take a second and think about.

[00:15:41] Are you hitting that regularly? Are you regularly working the hours that you wish you could or that you intend to work? Or do you find yourself working more? there's times where you need big energy and big time and big capacity for your business, and that will shift and change.

[00:16:01] For a period of time. What I'm talking about here is ongoing. Are you regularly working more than you intend on working? Now, the reason why I'm asking you this is because. You need to be aware so that you can figure out what changes do I need to make in my schedule or in my calendar to support my intention for how many hours I wanna work in my business a week? because this is what I do know, is that when you are regularly working more than you would ideally like to, There's slippage in other areas of your life, right?

[00:16:41] You end up sacrificing your time that you would've spent with your family or with your loved ones, or on your exercise routine, or on cooking dinner, or whatever it is that you want out of your life. So spending the time thinking about, am I working more than I would like to? Gives you an opportunity to pull things back and restructure your calendar.

[00:17:05] One of the things that I know about longevity and business owners, and I want you to think about this through the context of small business ownership, looks and feels fundamentally different to what it has in years gone by, right? So if you are a small business and you are running your business from home and your, uh, you know, maybe have a small team in place to support you.

[00:17:31] And if you want your business to be here five to 10 years from now, you need to prevent burnout. You need to look after yourself. You need to be balancing your life goals against your business goals. And the only way you can do that is by really getting clear on your intentions and all the things that we've talked about before, but.

[00:17:52] Making sure that your calendar is so tight, so that you are honoring your boundaries so that when you are working, you are being effective. And there's so many different components that come into this, and this is the work that I do with my clients We are obviously setting their business up long term, you know, operationally their business model to support, having systems and processes and, not needing to work all the hours.

[00:18:19] But in addition to that, there are so many other things and nuances that you need to consider. for example, knowing your chronotype , basically where when you go to sleep and when you have big energy for certain types of tasks, knowing what your life goals are, knowing what your availability is.

[00:18:40] Knowing what your boundaries are, right? So there's so many different other things that come into this when you are thinking about setting up your calendar, but also knowing what your goals are, and knowing what your plan is and what actions you need to take. And when These all inform how you schedule your time.

[00:19:03] And also considering about those habits that you have and the things that you want to set up your day with, how are they gonna fit in? Have you considered where they go in your calendar? So start to look at your calendar as a tool to help you to. Achieve that balance to work the hours that you wanna work, to be really intentional about how you spend your time and not get distracted by scrolling or, you know, checking your emails every five minutes.

[00:19:32] You can't start here though. It's a really important piece of the puzzle in your business reset, but please don't start here. Don't try and hack your time because those other things are so important and so relevant to what goes into how you set your calendar up for success.

[00:19:49] I wanna just quickly talk on one last thing before I wrap up this episode. It's not lazy to not want to, or have a desire to work long hours in your business. You have other priorities in addition to your business, and that's up to you to figure out what that looks like. But I think sometimes we can. Be left feeling like we're not working enough.

[00:20:19] And I've spoken about this on my Instagram, how I used to attach so much of my self worth in how much I was working and how busy I was, but those weren't bringing me joy. Whereas now I'm at a point in my business where I've set things up in such a way that I get to create real impact, real impact through this podcast, real impact with my clients, real impact in my life, with my family, and the things and people that are important to it.

[00:20:50] So don't let old narratives hold you back from wanting to refine how much you wanna work and what you wanna achieve outside of work or beyond work. I just wanted to touch on that because I think, well, I know you are a very ambitious person. You're a high achieving person. That's why you're in business for yourself.

[00:21:11] But it's okay to wanna have restraint. This is what allows you to have that enduring business that I know you wanna have. Okay, so we've covered a lot of ground today. And what I think is really important for you is to go and block out some time to do this reset. It's not enough to listen and feel good and feel like, oh yes, that reset sounds amazing, and then not do it right. Like, I really want you to set your business up so that 2024 is, you are in excellent shape. Okay? That's what, that's what the second half of this year is to drive home those goals to set yourself up for the following year.

[00:21:55] So, Set aside some time to do the reset, and if you can only if you can go somewhere else, try being away from your usual place of work, your office or your studio, or wherever it is that you work on a regular basis. It might be that you have a home office and you do this out in your living room or out in the garden or at a friend's house, or maybe you hire a space to go and do it, but it's, Just such a great way to get new energy and be revitalized as you are going through this , reset process to be in a different environment. So maybe try that.

[00:22:30] Okay, so what do we cover today? The first part of your business reset is to reflect on where you've been. The second part is to reconnect to your purpose or your why. The third is to refine your focus and intentions.

[00:22:48] Number four is to reset your goals and plan, and number five is to restructure your time to set your calendar up for success. My hope for you and this episode Boss, is that it's given you a framework for which to conduct a really thorough reset for your business and so that you feel revitalized and ready to take action on those big goals that you've set yourself for the second half of this year.

[00:23:16] Thank you so much for joining me for today's conversation. As always, I look forward to chatting with you next week. this episode was recorded on the land of killin Darbin. I pay tribute and respect to the turbo people who are the traditional owners and caretakers of the land in which this podcast is recorded.