Your 2013 Mid-Year Check-In -- 5 Steps to End 2013 With a Bang Rather Than a Whimper

With 2013 half over, it's time to pause, take a breath, and see if you're on track with your goals.

This is an essential part of running a successful business -- taking structured time throughout the year to work ON your biz and make sure the path you're on is, in fact, the path you want to be on.

Don't do this and you're just asking to build a biz that doesn't serve you (not to mention waking up one more morning and realizing your actual results are nowhere near what you want them to be).

We don't want that to happen to you so let's get started with your Mid-Year Check-In.

Now there are a lot of ways to do this, I'll share some steps I use and you can modify or implement to make it work for you.

1. Block off time in your calendar. Maybe it's a couple of hours, maybe it's a full day, but it's important to make this commitment to yourself.

2. Gather the necessary documents. You'll need your marketing calendar and your revenue report, plus you'll need the goals and plan you put together at the beginning of 2013. (What? You didn't write down your goals or put a plan together for 2013? Well let's put that aside for now -- but know we'll be coming back to that in another article.)

3. Take some time to analyze where your biz is right now. Now this is NOT about judging yourself or your biz, all you're doing is taking a realistic picture of where your biz is at this moment. And I also want you to review your initial 2013 goals and plans.(If you have them -- if you don't, I suspect you have some hazy idea in your head where you wanted to be in your biz at this point in 2013 so take some time to write that down just so you have something to compare.)

Where are you on track? Where are you off track? The places where you're off track, was there a time this year where things were clicking and then they stopped? And how off track are you?

And for all the places where you're on track -- give yourself a big congratulations!

4. Okay so now that you know where you are and how that compares to where you wanted to go, now it's time to look at the rest of the year. Do you want to continue on the same path? Do you want to change paths? Did you lose the path and you need to retrace your steps to get back on the path?

This might be a good place to do a little jou
aling or maybe some meditation or some other sort of inner check in to decide what you want the rest of your year to look like.

5. Put your plan together. Get out all your calendars -- your meeting calendar and your marketing/promo calendar -- and actually put your plan to paper. This is CRUCIAL -- successful people have WRITTEN plans and goals and you are FAR more likely to actually achieve your goals if they're written down. (And this isn't just me saying it -- there's an actual study out there about it.)

And I have 2 bonus tips -- first make sure you give yourself a pat on the back -- this is FANTASTIC you did this for yourself. And don't forget to start working your plan (a plan is great but now it's time to actually implement).