Every July, I do the same 11 steps with each one of my private coaching clients, to help them assess their business's progress so far in the year, and plan for the next six months, taking the actions necessary to ensure the business owner & her team are fully on-track so she can hit her goals.

The six-month mark gives you a chance to isolate successful actions and hone in on what exactly you're doing right.

And as you'll soon see, this is your chance to course-correct if necessary, reaffirm your goals, and light a fire under your team so you are all highly-motivated to succeed the remainder of the year!

So this week, on Fierce Feminine Finance, let me take you behind the scenes on my Plan HER Profits Method, through the steps which, if taken in early July, can set up your business for success the remainder of the year.

1. Review The Goals You Had Set For This Year & Celebrate The Milestones You Already Achieved

 Hopefully you set goals for yourself and your business at the beginning of the year. Now that the first six months are over, it's time to review how far you've come.

But remember: progress in business and in life isn't always linear.

Perhaps you set a goal to lose 30lbs. Well, if you haven't lost any weight, but you DID stop gaining more, and nailed down healthy eating habits you know you can stick to, that's a milestone worth celebrating.

It's important to celebrate every milestone along the way, so long as its in the right direction, or you risk burnout and other mental health issues in addition to whatever you were originally struggling with.

Don't add to your own burden by being too hard on yourself!

If you know you accomplished amazing things in the first half of the year, take time now to acknowledge yourself in ways that feel meaningful and special. Don't forget to also celebrate your team, partner, spouse, or anyone else instrumental in the achievement.

And if you have goals that went the wrong direction (worsened) or feel miles away from success, ask yourself:

"What skill set would put this outcome under my control?"

Finding the answer to THAT may help you determine the underlying cause of your lack of progress, and make it possible to take a pivotal step in the right direction.

2. Envision Your 3-5 Year Goals And Reaffirm How This Year Makes Them Possible

Often times business owners and entrepreneurs get sucked into the day-to-day and forget to look forward and outward. July is a great time to take a step back and work ON the business, instead of IN it.

What do you envision for yourself and your brand three years from now? How about five? Ten?

Recent studies have shown that having an altruistic goal can enhance motivation, business performance, mental well-being, and overall satisfaction with life. If you're struggling with motivation, try taking a look at the broader environment around you--is your financial goal tied to a greater "why" than yourself?

3. Compile Your Numbers For The Year So Far

Numbers have an important story to tell in your business. Tracking them, we can discover at a glance why certain trends happen—why your income is up (and how to strengthen it), why your new clients are down (and how to reverse the downward spiral).

The most common question I get asked as a money coach for entrepreneurs is: What numbers should I be tracking?

Some of these are obvious: your total revenue (business income), number of clients, appointments, etc.

Others are industry-specific. An e-commerce store would track different numbers than a plumbing company.

In the words of Albert Einstein: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

If your goal is to have hard data upon which you can reliably make solid business decisions, then here are some tips on where to start.

In his book, Measure What Matters, American investor and venture capitalist John Doerr says it best:

"[Numbers] benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the objective. Effective [quotas] are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable."

The best numbers to track in your business are those that directly relate to your current objective. Therefore goal-setting must come first.

If you have an objective, for example, I want to increase revenue from $100k to $250k this year. Well, it becomes immediately obvious that the first number you will have to track is "business revenue".

What is less obvious are the smaller numbers that add up to this key result. In order to understand what other numbers, if tracked, would give you power and correct answers in an analysis of your data, you would have to know the ins and outs of how money flows through your business.

4. Create or Review Your Business Flow Chart

Flow charts have been used by entrepreneurs (and engineers) to visualize data flow since the early 1920s.

By drawing out the steps a customer must take to go from "oblivious you exist" to "buying your thingamobob", the wise business owner can define a key result or "key performance indicator" (KPI) at each point along the way.

For example:

• Sees a Tiktok video

• Clicks over to your profile

• Watches 2-3 other videos

• Clicks the link in your bio

• Downloads a freebie (in exchange for an email address)

• Opens the Welcome email and clicks on call-to-action

• Purchases a tripwire ($17 offer)

We just outlined the flow of a customer from social media. If this is your current "sales funnel" or process...the numbers you would need to track consistently (on a weekly basis) are:

• Tiktok video views

• Profile views

• Link clicks

• Downloads

• Email open rate

• Email click-thru-rate

• Sales

By consistently tracking this data, you would be able to immediately identify what in your "funnel" (your marketing/sales process) is working...and what is not.

Without tracking this information, you would be pretty lost and might believe that luck or the alignment of the stars were the only cause of your business success.

5. Compare To The 1st Half Of Last Year

July marks the end of the first half of the year and an opportunity to review what worked/did not work in your business strategy. But many businesses make the mistake of only comparing this month to the last. Be sure to compare last quarter as well as what happened over the first half of last year in case your business is seasonal!

• How many new clients did you acquire?

• How many returning clients?

• How many clients did you lose (churn rate)?

• What was your Client Acquisition Cost (CAC - how much did you have to spend on ads, postcard printing, etc., per new customer)?

• Social Media: Which posts were the most viewed? Most effective? Look at this through the lens of ATTRACTION posts (new followers), NURTURE posts (building authority/know/like/trust) and CONVERT (call to action, posts that drove traffic to a funnel, booking link, etc).

• Email Marketing: Which emails had the best open rate? Click-thru-rate?

• Offline/Events: How many attendees? What percentage bought? How much time was spent in terms of man-hours?

The six-month mark gives you a chance to isolate successful actions and hone in on what exactly you're doing right.

And as you'll soon see when you review the data, this is your chance to course-correct if necessary, reaffirm your goals, and light a fire under your team so you are all highly-motivated to succeed the remainder of the year!

6. Repeat For Your Sales Strategy

Whether you are using an online sales funnel or an offline sales process to close your clients—now is the time to review the numbers and brush up on your sales skills before summer ends.

Review the first half of the year:

• Sales Calls: How many calls, contacts, closes?

• Funnels: How many unique views, opt-ins, sales?

What are the most common objections you hear to your offer? Now is a good time to refresh sales pages with new testimonials, design content that answers your most common questions, and find new and improved ways to position yourself as an authority and "best pick" by improving your sales image.

7. Review Your Financials And Wrap Up Bookkeeping For The First Half of the Year

Print out a copy of your Profit & Loss Statement, freshen up your budget, and look over where you're spending your money.

• Are you efficiently utilizing your budget to earn more money?

• Calculate out what it costs you to deliver to a client...are your prices high enough to cover this plus pay yourself?

• Review each bill you are paying in your business and ask yourself, What income does this bill make possible? Look for alternative software, phone carriers, insurance companies, etc., to reduce expenses

• Meet with your CPA to review your projected taxable income and adjust spending accordingly

Most business owners don't do this type of financial review until tax season...and by then of course it's far too late to change anything!

By keeping a better finger on the pulse of your business, you can make decisions from a place of confidence rather than hope or fear.

8. Create A Vision Board

Drawing up a vision of what your business and lifestyle SHOULD look like is the very first step toward manifesting that new reality.

Some people simply DECIDE and that alone is all they need. Others prefer to visualize it using pretty Pinterest photos. Still others journal on their Dreamy Day.

Regardless of your preferred method, here are a few tips to make the most of this exercise:

1. Get hyper specific! You know what you want: don't be afraid to declare it to yourself.

2. Get out of your own way. Suspend disbelief for ten minutes (or longer) while you do this exercise. Permit yourself to let go and play in a dreamland where anything is possible.

3. Lean into every one of your senses. Get the emotion of how achieving that will feel. See it in your mind's eye; smell the victory!

9. Calculate The Monthly Goals You Must Hit To Ultimately Attain Your Yearly Goal

Just last week I did a private money coaching session with a business owner who was struggling to get out of her own way. She admitted that the amount of money she NEEDS to make just to survive felt totally impossible.

We did some work around envisioning it, but it was clear after a few minutes that she was really struggling to broaden her ability to have that amount of money.

So I broke it down. We crunched the numbers and after seeing all it would take was charging $75/hour for the amount of hours she is already working...she finally realized how she was self-sabotaging! She felt hope and could smell victory at last.

Many women tell me they "hate numbers" and "aren't good at math" when the truth is they don't lack arithmetic skills (or a calculator) but in actual fact are struggling with fear of what the numbers will tell them.

Learn to face the math head-on. You'll be pleasantly surprised more often than not if you do.

10. Create A Red-Line Graph For Each Goal

One of the best and most brilliant tools for keeping yourself and your team on track to meet your goals is using what I call a "Red-Line Graph".

This is a graph that contains two lines:

1. The number you are tracking (such as income, etc)

2. A second line drawn in red to indicate the quota you set

Using a Red-Line Graph can help you stay motivated to reach your target.

I use a software called UseMyStats to monitor my business and other financial goals (such as getting out of debt, saving for the future, etc).

UseMyStats has many wonderful features, including a free plan for up to five graphs, and I love how it allows me to compare my progress to any earlier time period with the click of a button (such as comparing this quarter to last quarter, this quarter to same time last year, and more!).

To see a demonstration of how to navigate UseMyStats to create a Red-Line Graph, click here and watch my tutorial video.

11. Hold A Mandatory Team Meeting To Get Buy-In On Meeting Your New Goals

One of the most important things for a leader to do is keep everyone on the same page. I hold regular weekly meetings with my entire team, where we celebrate their wins, take radical responsibility for target achievement, and ensure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

But the first week of July we do something a little different. This is a time to re-align our values, re-inspire each other toward the goal...and take a deep breath before a hard push the second half of the year!

Want my complete guide to doing a 6-month review of your business, including my Team Meeting Agenda? Click below to download your free copy.