Checking In: Mid-Year Update on Our Goals, Lessons Learned, and What’s Next

behind the scenes summit success Jun 27, 2023

I'm sharing the progress on my January goals, what we've accomplished so far this year, and what my biggest areas of growth have been over the past few months.

I’ve got a fun and laid-back episode for you today where I'm going to give a mid-year update and check in as a follow-up to episode 209 where I shared my goals and vision for 2023.

Some of what I talked about in that episode has happened, a lot has changed, and I’ve learned an incredible amount about the way I work and how my brain works. I actually know where we’re headed in the next couple of months, which is more than I could say in that episode.

So today I’m going to share a check-in on the goals I set back in January, and I’ll talk a bit about what this first part of the year has looked like and what we’ve accomplished.

I also want to share some of my biggest learnings, areas of growth, and takeaways with you because I know there are a lot of you out there who have brains that work similarly to mine and I’m confident that you’ll be able to apply some of what I learned to your life and business. Or at the very least, just be able to look at things a little differently or know that you're not alone.

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Where I’m at with my January goals

Back in January, I set some goals for the year that included letting go of the constant hustle and feeling like I always had to be working on something, no longer working in the evenings and on Saturdays, and showing up rather than holding myself back when I have something to say. Let's look at how things are going with each of these goals:

Letting go of the hustle

My first goal was to get away from being in a constant state of hustle. At that time, I was in a pattern of letting excitement take over, and when that happened, I would overcommit. This led to my team being worn out and to me working nights and weekends. I didn't necessarily have a problem with working so much, maybe I should have, but I literally didn't know what I would even do with whitespace because I didn't know what to do with it. Any time I had a free minute, I felt like I needed to find something to do, and I didn't know how to handle it. I'm very happy to report that this is going much better.

Let’s break down what we’ve been up to this year so far:

January

January was busy! We had our client summit going on and I was really at someone else’s beck and call, which was hard and very time-consuming. You can go back and read about my key takeaways from our client summit if you’re interested.

It also covered things like changes we made to our strategy because of our experience with this summit and our own experience in the B2C niche and launching a membership: two things I hadn’t had firsthand experience with until now.

February

This was also a busy month because we had spent the past 3 months working on someone else’s business and we had some catching up to do with our own.

We focused on our business by doing things like:

hosting a live challenge to get momentum in our business again.
launching a new free series called Summit to Sales.
making a few tweaks to our offers based on several of my values and the way we want to approach things.

March

March was an interesting month! My coach, Kaitlyn Kessler, has a quick, high-impact mindset challenge each month and March was around discomfort. You were supposed to do something every day that made you feel uncomfortable and commit to doing that every day. Most people would have included things like making an offer to someone or talking about their offer on social media. But to me, the challenge I committed to was not adding or taking action on new projects.

I hadn’t noticed how bad I was at managing ideas until then! I get excited when I have a new idea and I run with it. I never noticed it was a problem before and since I was always in that state of constant hustle, I filled that whitespace by taking action on my ideas.

Within 2 hours of telling my team that I had committed to this, I was already in Slack saying how much I hated it. They thought that was hilarious! The first week or two were really hard because my ideas were running wild. But I’m so glad I stuck with it!

At the end of the month, I had like 15 new ideas that normally I would have taken action on, but forcing myself to have that whitespace brought out so much more than just a list of things I wanted to do. It let me and my team have space throughout the month and made me figure out what to do with that space. It’s been a journey! I’m so used to feeling driven by pressure to do something that it almost creates some anxiety around having whitespace.

This has also forced me to look at each idea a little more in-depth and decide if it’s actually a good idea or if it’s more important than what I’m already working on. Almost all the time, it can wait. So, this has been such a good thing for me and I’m considering doing this a few times per year.

April

Spoiler alert! I’m recording this in April because we record so far ahead, but I already have so much to share with you!

April brought about a lot of curriculum updates in our Summit in a Box and Launch with a Summit Accelerator programs. We’ve updated over 100 lessons and templates with new, up-to-date strategies, new things we want to provide to our clients and students, and things like that. It’s been really great!

Between those curriculum updates, we started working on some quick, short projects from that list that I made in March. I prioritized the list and grouped it into short and long-term projects, along with whether it’d be a high or low impact on our clients and students. I realized many were fairly small projects so I scheduled a week between projects to just knock out as many of those as I could.

Then, we moved our focus to our next big project, Beyond One and Done: a workshop for repeat summit hosts that we hosted live a few weeks before this post went live.

Overall, getting away from the constant state of hustle has been going well.

Stop working Saturdays

The second goal I set was to stop working on Saturdays. Working weekends had started after my second daughter was born, and I decided not to put her in childcare. I needed those Saturdays to catch up on things at first, but eventually, it was just a way of continuing the hustle and adding in more work hours.

Since the end of February, when we wrapped up our client summit, I’ve stopped working Saturdays and it feels really nice. My coach Kaitlyn helped me see that my business will fit into the container I give it, and right now, I don’t want that container to include Saturdays.

Now, we have more family time and I’ve been able to disconnect and relax. I go into Mondays feeling more refreshed, and it's really nice.

Stop worrying about what other people think

The next goal I set was to stop worrying if I was bothering other people when I show up on Facebook or Instagram. At the time, I was up in my head before posting on IG Stories or in the Summit Host Hangout Facebook group and was worried about what people would think and how they’d respond.

But I don’t let that worry control me anymore.

What I have to share is going to have more benefit to others than harm it would do to me, so I post it anyway. Overall, the worry about what other people will think hasn't gone away entirely, but I’m feeling it less intensely than before, and I don’t let it hold me back.

Giving myself time and space to think

The next goal I had was to give myself time and space to just think. I was relying on shower-time and car-time as my only whitespace and work time was used to get task-based work done only. I wanted to start giving myself space and time to brainstorm and think of solutions and have new ideas.

I had the idea to start with an hour or two each week, and I’m slightly bummed to report that I’m bad at this. I still try it a couple of times per week, but then I get bored, don’t know what to do, and go find work to do instead.

I think giving myself more whitespace in my life and hustling less while I’m working is helping with this some, but there’s still work to do there.

Remembering to take time off

My next goal was to take time off from work. I realized that in 2022, I took one 3-day trip with my family in March and that’s the only time I took off except for Thanksgiving and Christmas when we take a more extended break from business. That included weekends that I wasn’t taking off either!

So I sat down back in January, and I blocked off an entire week per quarter to take the week completely off. I’m so happy to report that I love it!

The biggest issue is that I don’t want to start working again after having time off. I have to get myself hyped back up to work. When I have time off from work, I realize what my priorities are, what matters most, and I come back realizing that what I thought was really important before…actually doesn’t matter so much.

So that’s a bit of a challenge, but a good one, right?

My next week off is in June when my oldest daughter will be at Vacation Bible School, so I’m going to go volunteer with whatever they need in the afternoons, and in the mornings while the babysitters are here, I don’t know what I’ll do!

Owning my incredible offers

My next goal was to own my incredible offers for all they are. I had the realization near the end of hosting the client summit that we 100% have the best summit hosting resources out there. But I hadn't been operating as if that were true and I wanted to own it more. I really think I’ve stepped into that.

Even now as I reflect on our offers, I look at them more confidently knowing I give people the best, most up-to-date strategies and high-quality templates they could need.

I feel like I could talk about our offers more, but I don’t want it to feel like a pitch fest. I feel like I strike a good balance right now of making sure people know our offers are there without it seeming like it’s all we talk about.

I have no doubt that our resources are the best ones out there when it comes to hosting summits, and that’s what I want to embrace more.

Nailed that one!

I’m proud of myself.

After looking back at all the goals I made and where I’m at with each one, I’m proud of myself. I’d say the biggest area for improvement is still giving myself the time and space to think and not forcing myself to constantly work. It’s something I have to continue to pay attention to.

Everything we have accomplished so far this year

I’ve already touched on a few of the things that we’ve accomplished in our business so far this year, but I’ll go a little more in-depth on a few of them here.

We started out the year by hosting our client’s summit in January. Then, we hosted a 5-day challenge as a way to serve our audience in a quick and easy way and get a cash injection.

After working on that summit for someone else, I came back to my own business and realized there were some things I didn't love about what we had going on, especially when it came to our freebies. We give our Accelerator clients a red-carpet experience, but our free offers and website just weren’t showing that same experience. A quick PDF with tips to go from summit to launch was not doing anyone any good. So we released our new free training series Summit to Sales.

I want our free offers to reflect our paid offers as much as I reasonably can, so I gave them that red-carpet experience in the quality of our content, our feedback, and little surprises built-in. This feels more in alignment with my values and how I want to run my business.

We also made updates to our current offers by removing things that weren’t serving our people well and made tweaks to the way our Accelerator program was structured and the support pieces we offered within it.

We also updated our tiers for Summit in a Box in a way that made more sense for how we do things around here. And we’re working on updating our messaging to go from “Let a summit save your business” to “Here’s a strategy to make your successful business even better”.

We revamped our Facebook Ads strategy. Elli handles most of that, thankfully, but she tells me what to record and I hand that over to her.

Now, we’re working on planning our workshop for repeat summit hosts called Beyond One and Done. When you host events, it's easy to get caught up in the immediate results and not leave room to see the long-term benefits it can have on your business. So back in episode 228, I talked about the power of repeat summits and how they’re more than a one-time cash injection.

The biggest lessons I’ve learned this year

I want to end this episode by sharing a few of the biggest takeaways and lessons I’ve learned so far this year. I feel like my mindset and outlook on things have changed more within the past couple of months than it has in a very, very long time. I think this has a lot to do with Kaitlyn’s challenge.

Consistently hitting our sales goals

My first takeaway is the fact that we’ve been able to consistently hit our sales goals without launching, and I’m so thankful for that. Our monthly sales goal is more money than I made my first year in business, which is intense sometimes. Last year I was stuck feeling like we had to launch all the time. Thankfully, I’m out of that mindset.

We did host a summit in December and a challenge in February, but those were only segmented at a small portion of our whole audience. And that’s all we’ve done so far as of the time of recording in April.

I'm just very grateful for the business I've built, the team I have around me, and the people who refer clients to us so that we can have quieter seasons and still see success. Having a sustainable business that doesn't have the pressure to constantly be launching has been good for my mindset.

Weaving my faith into my business

My second takeaway is that my faith is a big part of who I am and how I run my business. I feel like God has been pushing me that now is the time to be a little bit more open about it. I try to strike a careful balance. I don’t want to push away anyone who isn’t Christian just because I am, but my faith is a huge part of my life. We go to small groups once a week, volunteer in our church, go to service every week, my husband is on the worship team, we have Bible Studies, and so much more.

So a few months ago, I realized I wanted a community of business owners who felt the same way or wanted the same things I did so I used our email list and Instagram to start a Bible study with business owners. We’re only a couple weeks in, as of recording this, and it’s been such a blessing.

If you’re a Christian business owner, or you're curious about it, please don't ever hesitate to reach out to me on Instagram via email. I’m always open to chatting and am a safe space to talk about that stuff with.

Embracing the slow seasons

I kind of already talked about this, but another takeaway is really embracing the slow seasons and not seeing them as a bad thing or needing to fill that time. I’ve had to work through that and come up against some mindset blocks, but I’m so grateful for my coach Kaitlyn in my corner cheering me on.

I never expected that giving myself space and having slower seasons would bring up more issues and things to work through, but it's been so worth it to be able to have a more ease-filled and spacious life and business.

Noticing my moods and motivation

Another takeaway I’ve learned recently is that by allowing myself that space, and because I’m not constantly feeling that pressure to complete all the tasks, I've been able to notice how much the weather affects my mood and motivation. If it’s cloudy, all bets are off. My husband knows to bring me a coffee to boost my mood.

I’m also paying more attention to my cycle to see if that impacts anything. Don’t worry, I know that’s not relevant for all my listeners, so I won’t go into any more than that, but paying attention to these things has been eye-opening for me.

If you’re someone who pays attention to these things, please DM me, and let’s talk about it.

What The Rest of The Year Looks Like

I’ll wrap this up by talking about what’s coming up for the rest of the year. I am someone who does not plan way far in advance. I do not have a year-long calendar of what we’re doing. I don’t even have a six-month calendar of what we’re doing. I work based on what I’m excited about.

So, we just had the Beyond One and Done workshop, and next, we are launching our first-ever, somewhat non-related offer. It’s still for summit hosts, but it’s not summit-related. It’s going to serve some of you, especially those who have launched summits or don’t feel quite ready for a summit, it’s going to serve you really well. You’ll be hearing more about that in the coming months, but that’s all I’m going to say about that.

After that, we’ll spend time stabilizing and updating our funnels based on that. Then, honestly, I don’t know what’s next. I don’t like doing things in the fall season because I feel like everyone else is and I don’t want to feel like I’m competing with all that noise. So maybe that’s when we’ll do some more internal work, but I don’t have plans yet beyond that.

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I'm sharing the progress on my January goals, what we've accomplished so far this year, and what my biggest areas of growth have been over the past few months.

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