A week ago we past the half year mark. This has been the first week of the Scottish school holidays and as I’ve been enjoying the Spanish sun with my wife and kids, I’ve taken a little time to reflect on the last quarter.
At the beginning of the year Chris and I set some Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) for our property business, both to stretch ourselves and as part of Touchstone Millionaire Maker competition, which we love being part of. Our goals tie together our ambitions across our SA business, our packaged SA offering, introducing commercial shop and upper developments and progressing our training and mentoring. Reflecting on where we are, there has been a great deal of progress in our businesses and growth in ourselves. Whilst it can sometimes feel like taking a 6 month snapshot right now doesn’t equate to half of what we want to achieve in 2019, we do feel that the foundations laid and momentum gathered in Q1 & Q2 will tee us up for strong second half of the year. With our first commercial deal secured before the holidays and a few larger deals in the short list analysis pipeline we’re excited about the quarter ahead.
Whether you set big hairy audacious annual goals, half year goals or 90 day goals, this mid-way point in the year prompts a great opportunity to check in on where we stand with things.
If you’re looking for inspiration on how to review the past quarter or 6 months, a good place to start is using the ‘7 Figure Monthly Review’ -courtesy of Peter Voogd. Instead of monthly, I take 1-2 hours at the end of each quarter to apply the questions to my last 90 days.
It’s so important to be invest time in reviewing your months/quarters/half years/years. This kind of exercise holds multiple rewards for you and is a goldmine of learning and ideas if you’ll just take the time to do it. Benefits include, taking time to acknowledge your incremental progress, course correcting, checking in on alignment to your highest values, identifying patterns or insights you can learn from….you get the idea.
So what are you waiting for?
If you’re up for investing some ‘holiday time’ on yourself, here’s the full 6 phase process I got from Peter Voogd and use each quarter.
Section #1 – OVERVIEW
What went well, what didn’t?
When was I in my zone, when wasn’t I?
When was I at my emotional energy peak?
What caused me peace of mind?
What frustrated me? Did I do what I said I was going to do?
What systems have I put in place?
Section #2 – PSYCHOLOGICAL
What have been my biggest breakthroughs?
What have been my biggest frustrations?
What have been my mind-shifts?
What have been my biggest disappointments?
Section #3 – TACTICS
This section looks at what were my top 5 wins from last month/quarter; financial, family, adventure…?
Getting down to business metrics ask yourself:
Did I hit my business income goal last month/quarter?
What were the top three marketing campaigns or sources of income last month/quarter?
What were my top income producing activities?
What are the biggest ways I’ll be producing income this next month/quarter?
How did I add value to the marketplace, could I have added more?
The above will likely be related to your highest values but only you will know.
Did I leverage technology?
Did I maximise my reach?
What will exponentially grow my reach this next month/quarter?
What did I do to stay adventurous and feel fully alive?
To help keep you from the nitty gritty march of each day it’s important to mix it with the things that energise you. It might be something small ie for me it’s getting in a game of tennis once a week, or maybe you had planned a mini break with your loved one. For those with freedom in their highest values this will be particularly important. Can you mix your passion and profession and link up travel to fun destinations with your work?
If you aren’t consciously making a decision to put things in your diary that will keep you alive and vibrant, you will become complacent and procrastinate the big work needed for your goal.
Section #4 – RELATIONSHIPS
I love this one:
Who did I you connect with and reach out to last month/quarter?
Did I take care of my current relationships and did I reach out to people who can cut my learning curve in half- i.e. people who I can partner with in some way that’s relevant to your business?
Did I leverage partnerships?
Section #5 – TEAM
Think about questions that will help with your team review:
How was my team engagement?
How was my speed of communication?
What feedback can I give them?
What do they need in terms of skill development?
Section #6 – LEGACY
What did I work on that was legacy focused? In other words something that you work on now but won’t get paid until long into the future, or something that you don’t reap the benefits for until way later, ie it can be creating things that you value but that you get paid 6 months or more down the road for. Note that if you just do this kind of work for the rewards/benefits you will lose steam, it’s important to engage in legacy work for other reasons, for something bigger than you.
Voogd recommends spending 80% of your time on profit making activity, creating systems etc that makes sure you have the money coming in for you and your family now. Then 20% of your time on legacy focused things. Eventually when you have built the business you want you can switch focus to investing 80% of your time on the legacy side of things. Isn’t that an exciting prospect? To spend 80% of your time on something that helps a cause you believe in or adds value to the world in some way, and not worry whether it pays you or not.
And there you have it. If you don’t have a review process, I urge you to copy this into a word doc and start now.
I’d love to know who already has a review process like this and who will start now having read this post.