712: What Is Your Business Telling You?
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What if the better mid-year question is not “Am I on track?” but “What is my business telling me?” In this episode, we look at the first half of 2026 as a source of real feedback from our calendar, clients, team, energy, systems, and stress points. We talk about what growth exposes, what we may still be tolerating, and why not every profitable part of the business is actually healthy. We also reflect on what is working, what no longer fits, and what kind of owner the second half of the year requires us to become. This is an invitation to finish the year with more clarity, alignment, and honesty.
Main topics:
Mid-year business reflection
What growth exposes
Boundaries and tolerations
Simplifying what no longer fits
Leading the second half
Main takeaway: “What we tolerate becomes the culture of our business.”
That applies whether you have a team of employees or you are still operating solo. The late-night texts, the unclear policies, the difficult clients, the incomplete reports, and the constant exceptions all teach people what is normal in your business. A mid-year review is not just about revenue or goals; it is about asking what the first half of the year has revealed. What are you still carrying that no longer fits? The business you have in December is shaped by what you choose to address today.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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Meghan 0:01
We are halfway through the year 2026 and that feels almost impossible. This year has flown by,
Collin 0:08
it really does. And you know, I think every year around this time people start thinking about talking about, we do too, about what am I? Am I on track? Am I headed in the right direction? We
Meghan 0:20
only have half a year left to change course and complete our goals, so are we on that right track,
Collin 0:25
which is a fair question, because we want to know, and if we haven't been keeping track up to this point, I think now is a really good time to do it, and that's what we want to talk about on today's episode, but I think there's a slightly different question that really helps us, that's a lot better and more helpful than just the generic, am I on track?
Meghan 0:42
Hopefully you've set goals for the year and on your way to achieving them. Think about what this year, so far, the past six months has revealed about your business. Your business has been giving you a lot of data, a lot of information, a lot of.. you've been tracking the metrics this whole time, and so even your calendar has given you information. Where have you been spending your time. Who have you been devoting your time to? Or where? Where are things lacking? What have you not been giving enough attention? Your clients are also giving you information, the good, the bad, the ugly. Your team is giving you feedback as well. Your energy, where again, where you've been spending your time or not, is also giving you
Collin 1:18
data, and that's all been happening, whether we've been paying attention or not, whether we've been listening to that information or not. So, instead of asking, am I on track, that question of what is the this year, what is my business, what are my clients, what are my team, what is what am I telling myself so far, and that's what's really powerful for us and our business.
Meghan 1:40
Hi, I'm Megan.
Collin 1:41
I'm Collin.
Meghan 1:42
We are the host of Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. And we are so glad that you have joined us for this episode today. We would like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates, Pet Perennials, and our Patreon supporters, for keeping the show going. We love that you guys love it and have found value in it. We want to take a step back here, because sometimes when you hit a goal, you can still be building the wrong business, and sometimes when you miss the goal, you can actually learn exactly what needs to change. When you think back over what everything that has happened, also ask yourself, is this business still built for the life, the clients, the team, and the future that I actually want. I always use this example, but steer, am I still steering the ship in the right direction? Because that question is, the business still built for what I want? That really is going to inform a lot of your decisions. When you can hold up a mirror and say, is this what I want, yes or no, or not yet. Am I still building to what I want?
Collin 2:44
Well, that's definitely a different way of conducting a midyear review, or just framing our entire approach to business. Because typically the midyear review is, have I onboarded the number of clients that I wanted to? Yes or no. Am I meeting my revenue goals? Yes or no. Is my profit margin still on track and healthy, yes or no. But now what we want to do is I don't want to look at numbers, because numbers aren't everything. Numbers aren't my entire life,
Meghan 3:10
they are a lot,
Collin 3:12
they are important, but what we want to look for, more important and above than the numbers, the profit margin, the clients, the team, that stuff, we actually want to look at is my business aligned with me and where I want to go,
Meghan 3:26
so think about what this year, so far, 2026 has exposed for you, not what went wrong or what broke, but what got exposed, what was I too vulnerable on, what new cracks formed in the foundation of my business.
Collin 3:40
Well, and not just new cracks. A lot of times when our business exposes something, whether that's the marketing that we tried, or the clients we brought on, or the team that happened, or my energy levels, whatever that is, sometimes those what's exposed those problems actually aren't new at all. They're actually just old problems that finally grew to be a problem now because of whatever we're currently experiencing.
Meghan 4:02
Yeah, maybe you are up 20% this year, and your old systems and old ways worked last year, but now, because you have increased so much, they don't work anymore.
Collin 4:12
You had the clunky intake process of, well, it's very manual, it takes a long time, but all of a sudden you are growing at 2030, 40% rapidly, and what used to work now isn't. Now it always had that potential to be a problem, but it wasn't until it became obvious now that it's inundated, and you're overwhelmed.
Meghan 4:30
Yeah, same thing can happen with clients. A difficult client may just have been more difficult through the years, and now your team or you are finally so exhausted by them that you just need to cut them out entirely. We also talk a lot about policies and making sure that they are still aligned with our business, or if they are no longer working, or it's unclear. It may have been unclear for years and
Collin 4:52
years. Here's a great one: right changes to the schedule must are due at end of day on Friday makes. I think I know what that means, but does end of day mean end of business day, end of when the sun goes down? You can see how there's this gray area, and it's not a problem until it is. And now we need to go back and find that, find where the pain point is, and actually address it.
Meghan 5:16
Or, for a long time, your service area has been too large, and now with gas prices continuing to go up and drive time and schedule gaps, it makes it a really painful experience to drive that length of time. There are almost endless possibilities for what could be cracking or breaking in your business. Problems, like you said, are not always new. Sometimes growth just makes old problems impossible to ignore. This is usually very apparent when you start hiring employees for the first time, and you realize, oh, when they have a 45 minute visit, they can't just spend an hour and a half there, because then I have to pay them for that entire hour and a half. We all have to readjust clients, employees, ourselves, readjust expectations for those new visits,
Collin 5:59
and again, you mentioned that growth may have have surfaced the problems. It could just be that you're more tired and exhausted, or it could just be that you've had life changes that don't allow you to physically do things anymore. And when, so, when we ask, what is this year telling me, it's what are the problems that are important today? When
Meghan 6:20
you turned your phone off for 30 minutes, what happened?
Collin 6:23
Happened?
Meghan 6:23
How many things broke, or did anything break?
Collin 6:26
Well, or maybe you got sick this year, and you suddenly had that crashing realization that the entire business is you, and because you couldn't do something, the business couldn't operate. Or maybe you needed a vacation, or you had to step away, and everything just comes to a screeching halt, right? That doesn't mean that you've failed; it just reveals something important about this business. You have more information than you did previously.
Meghan 6:52
For us, this year, we're realizing that we need more leadership structure and admin and operations help than we ever have before. That's something that we've, we've learned over the past few months, you know, we have help, and if you're listening, and you have a team as well, you have help, but everyone still comes to you for every answer, you are still the backstop, and yes, we are the owners, we make decisions, but some people need to have agency in order for us to step away and take a breath,
Collin 7:20
you may be saying, well, yeah, I have staff, but if I have no clear decision-making system, or I've got the coverage, but not enough accountability, is really what you're talking about there, Megan. We've got the people, but I don't have a team, I don't have cohesion, I don't feel like people are operating the way they need to. So maybe what kept repeating some questions for you, whether you've got a team, whether you're solo, whatever questions for you to ask. What kept repeating January through June? What problem kept showing up over and over and over for your life, and in your business, with your team, with your clients, with your policies, procedures? What did you keep seeing week to week or month to month,
Meghan 8:02
what was stressful for you? What kept getting harder every time you had to deal with it. You kept saying again this problem as the summer months have crept in and you've gotten busier. What has become harder for you to do?
Collin 8:16
Yeah, what was easy during the slow period versus hard in the fat and the faster period. This is one where Meg and I really view the fast periods as stress testing our business. What will continue to operate versus what breaks down, and really spending time to debrief after those. Maybe it's that weekend during the Fourth of July, and now you're like, oh my goodness, this is the busiest I have been since Christmas, and XYZ broke. Use that as information as your business telling you that, or whatever that is. When you find those busy seasons, pay attention to the pain points, because they're going to tell you a lot of what needs to be fixed,
Meghan 8:51
or it's going to highlight what things don't need to be fixed, and just you let those fall off. I see the crack, I don't want to deal with that anymore, that particular issue, and so I just let it go by the wayside. I don't, I don't try to fix it. Think about what you are tolerating that you said you would fix, but maybe now you don't need to anymore, or that you've just been putting up with, but that you actually do need to fix.
Collin 9:16
Yeah, at the start of the year, we always start off with a lot of gusto and energy and excitement, and we, we say these wonderful things, like I'm never going to answer my phone after 5pm anymore, or I'm going to enforce my cancelation policy finally. Woo, let's go, or I'm going to do the price raise, or I'm going to stop doing last-minute requests. All of these things are great and fantastic, but it's June. How are those going for you? Right, maybe, maybe we're realizing that we're continuing to tolerate those things when we should have enforced them such a long time ago.
Meghan 9:55
Yeah, sometimes it's not a business problem, it's a leadership problem. I need to stand my ground. Found more with my team, my clients, and mostly with myself. What have I let lapse this year? Everybody stops going to the gym in February because it's too hard to get up at 5am and do those reps. I don't like doing it either, but sometimes we need to look in the mirror and have a hard conversation with ourselves and go for the betterment of the business, for the betterment of the team, for the betterment of myself. I need to be a stalwart on this.
Collin 10:27
Yeah, maybe it was I'm going to deal with that client issue finally, or that employee issue finally, and we still have it. And this is, we're saying this not to shame or to denigrate or anything like that. It's just we have to look at ourselves in a very honest way and say I said that that thing was important for me, I said that I was going to do that, and I, and I didn't do it. We have to remember that what we tolerate becomes the culture of our business. Now you may be thinking, but Collin, but Megan, I'm a solo operator. There's no culture to be had, and I will tell you this: you have culture, whether you realize it or not, because what you tolerate when you're solo becomes your personal work life, it becomes how you view your time, it becomes how you value yourself, that is a culture that you are perpetuating,
Meghan 11:26
and that's why it's so important, even when you're solo, to have those boundaries, to respect your time, to protect your time, because it only is going to be exacerbated if you get a team.
Collin 11:36
Yep, what if you, and if you do have a team, what you tolerate becomes your team standard, it becomes what they hold themselves to. It becomes what the lowest performing person has will find acceptable, and it will bring everybody else down, because they will know. Okay, well, here's where we live. We live down here, and I don't have to try hard. I have to do anything better. I don't have to do that.
Meghan 11:58
If you say it's okay, Janice, that you didn't get to vacuuming this time. I know that somebody else will pick it up. Well, if everybody has that mentality, then nobody's actually going to vacuum around the litter box, and the client's going to come home to a big mess.
Collin 12:10
Yep, if everybody's thinking somebody else will do it instead of taking the ownership of that work. Right now is a good time to remind ourselves that the business that I have in December is shaped right now, but what I tolerate today, the business I have in six months is shaped by what I tolerate today. And if we think that's true, what am I tolerating today, and what will that shape in 10 years, in 15 years, and how do I build there? We want to take a moment to tell you about our friends at Pet Perennials, because if you've been in pet care long enough, you know this: the way you show up during the hard moments is what clients actually remember, and Pet Perennials helps you do exactly that. They create beautiful sympathy and milestone gifts for pet parents, and their gift perks program makes it easy to send those gifts directly to your clients, no inventory, no packing boxes, no running frantically to the post office at the last minute. You simply choose the gift, and Pepper Neils takes care of everything else. They'll even include a handwritten card and colorful gift wrap at no additional cost. It really is a thoughtful and simple way to support grieving clients while also building the kind of long-term loyalty that great businesses are built on, learn more and open a free gift perks account at Pet perennials.com So, if you are tolerating
Meghan 13:30
late-night client texts, you teach clients that your boundaries are flexible, they can just call you anytime and you'll pick up. And yes, we do want to be there for our clients, at the same time, we need to have our own life and decompress as well. If we have team members that are doing incomplete visit reports, you know, they didn't say that they scooped the litter, or they didn't include the picture of walking the dog, that teaches them that those standards are okay, that they're common, that the high levels that you want them to perform at are really optional.
Collin 14:00
Something that's even more subtle is if you tolerate rude clients, clients who are disrespectful to your staff. What I'm teaching my staff is that revenue matters more than them.
Meghan 14:13
Yeah, people can talk to us like this, and we're just going to take it because they're paying
Collin 14:17
us money, which your, which your team does feel. I promise you, they feel that they see that they know that even though they might not speak up about it.
Meghan 14:25
If you have clients that book last minute, always they are repeat offenders every single week, they book you every week, but it's always 24 hours before they need care that teaches them that chaos is normal for you, for the business that you're allowing them to do this, and of course, there are fees that you can put into place of a last-minute fee and charge a lot of prices, but some people, at the end of the day, they don't care, they want that flexibility.
Collin 14:49
Well, or maybe you do have those last-minute fees in place, but you keep making exceptions, you keep making exceptions, and making exceptions. Well, eventually, guess what, you don't actually have policies, you just have. Suggestions that you don't even follow yourself when
Meghan 15:02
the exceptions become the rule
Collin 15:03
exactly, and then you're left with a business that you don't actually like. So ask yourself, what did I say that I would stop doing that I am still doing? And I think more importantly, is what am I actually afraid of will happen if I enforce this, this policy, this standard, both to clients and to my team,
Meghan 15:28
we always freak out around price increases, right? I'm afraid that all my clients are going to leave me. Well, statistically, that's not going to happen. Some clients may leave you, but then more will come in behind them and pay your new higher price
Collin 15:41
also ask, where have I confused kindness with avoidance? This is a pitfall that I fall into all of the time, of well, I'll just let it slide this once because I'm trying to be kind when what I'm actually doing is avoiding the confrontation, is avoiding the hard conversation that I know I need to have, and so I get to come across as the nice guy, and the client gets what they want, and we can keep moving on, and that's easier to me than actually saying and putting a drawing a line in the sand and saying no, this is what has to happen, and this was what needs to take place,
Meghan 16:16
and I feel like sometimes that's even harder for us to enforce with employees, because at least the clients, there's a screen right there, but with employees I have to interface with them and have face to face meetings or Zoom meetings where I'm seeing them, you know, their facial reactions, and I don't want to upset them, and I don't want to write them up because I don't want to look like the bad guy, and I want to keep them on, or I'm so busy that I need staff who, you know, even though they perform at a C plus level, I still need to keep them on because I need bodies in the field because I'm so busy.
Collin 16:44
Yep, but then when I have to sit across from them and say you were over on 78% of your visits in the past week, what happened and why? And then I can't just stop there. I host, I have to come in and say this is unacceptable, this is not the standard. Here's how we're going to move forward from this, because that caught, but that costs something, and that's another thing. What, what? Ask yourself, what services, tasks, clients, team members, habits, what keeps costing more than it gives? And here we're not talking about just finances, it's peace of mind. What team member is costing you more peace of mind when they're in the field than the when the than what they give, what policy is costing you more headache to enforce or to work around or to to to not enforce than it actually gives your business or that client, like it's we tend to think of costs of this is my money, but your peace of mind, your ability to sleep, your ability to turn off and go do something else, your ability to think clearly is is priceless,
Meghan 17:54
and that even includes your admin team. When somebody is on your admin team constantly asking you questions about how do I do this, or how do I troubleshoot this? How do I get this done? What do you want me to do today? What's the task list? They need to be operating at their own level and thinking outside the box and troubleshooting for themselves before coming to you, because your point in hiring them was not so you could work alongside them and do double work on the same issue. I
Collin 18:18
didn't need a coworker, right? And this is this other bucket that we can do during a mid-year review of asking what has become heavier than it should be. It's not, and this, we're not saying what was taking more time or what is costing more money, because some parts of our businesses, they might not look like a problem on paper, but man, they feel heavy. They feel heavy to us because of our concern, of our anxiety around them. There's the client that may be profitable, but goodness, they're just emotionally exhausting every time they book, man. They pay your rates, they pay your after-hours fees, they tip amazingly, but every time there's a team member in that visit, you are so stressed out because you just don't know what's going to come out of that client's mouth or what they're going to nitpick the next time there's the service, maybe you're doing a lot of revenue in pet sitting, like that's that's a big one, but the constant strain of the scheduling and the last minute, and all of the details just start to strain and drag on you more than you expected, or it's increasing over time.
Meghan 19:32
Maybe you have an employee that is incredibly kind and does great visits, but they need so much support when they're in the field that they constantly are messaging you, maybe it's not even about visits, it's just things that are happening during their shift, and so it drains your leadership capacity. You need to be dealing with other things that are more high level than being in the field, because again, we don't want a coworker.
Collin 19:57
Maybe at the beginning of the year you brought on a brand. Do software, because you were super excited about all of the hopes and dreams and things that it could solve for you, and, and, yeah, it technically works, but what it's actually done, as the months have progressed, is just create a whole bunch of admin work every week, because you need to troubleshoot, you need to double check, you need to manually do a lot more things that you weren't expecting, it's just starting to weigh on you,
Meghan 20:21
so think about if there's ways you can automate some of those things. We bring on these softwares, we bring on this admin help, and sometimes we create more problems or more tasks than we really should. There are ways to mitigate this. If you try to do marketing channel this year or specific advertising method, it may not have paid off like you thought, or it got you the wrong kind of leads. If you signed up for the golf course, being on the little cards, score cards, scorecards, and that has brought in people from way outside your service area time to rethink that.
Collin 20:55
Not everything that is profitable is healthy, not everything that is profitable is healthy for you personally, and for your business. So, again, what is feeling heavier? Maybe it's client communications, or holiday scheduling, or always being available to clients and to your team. Maybe it's the driving. Maybe you used to love it, but now you don't. Maybe just the kind of traffic that you're encountering is way more than you expected, or just the physicality of our work.
Meghan 21:24
It could also be the training, or the scheduling, the route planning, the last minute call outs from your team. Those are very stressful and feel very heavy at times, because you have to solve it immediately. It cannot wait. Also, things that feel heavy, maybe the onboarding process, or talking with brand new hires and getting them up to speed and making sure that they have the same culture and the same fit and that they have all the same knowledge that everybody else has.
Collin 21:49
Again, this right now, you're gonna answer this question, What about my business used to feel manageable, but now feels expensive emotionally.
Meghan 22:02
There are things about this business that drain us, and it's not just the pets passing away or the clients moving, and we have to replace that income, or really enjoy that relationship that we had with that five day a week client that we saw every week for years. There are other things being available all the time, not being able to take time away, having to constantly answer people's questions, or manage people, or having your website be SEO with an inch of its life,
Collin 22:30
AI owed, and AEI, oh, you, and whatever is that
Meghan 22:33
the leads coming in and continuing to have a good marketing funnel, and, and all of these things, that there's a lot to being a business owner.
Collin 22:41
Yeah, what did you use to be able to handle emotionally, mentally, or operationally? What worked for you? What was manageable at 50,000 in revenue might not be manageable for you at 150 or what worked with you, what worked for you when you had five clients might not work when you have 500 or when you were solo, and now you have a team of employees, or maybe you've branched out into a different service area now, and what worked for you with a certain kind of clientele and demographic in one city, one neighborhood, one area, it doesn't work anymore, and yet we continue to try and make it work, because honestly, we're creatures of habit, and that's fundamentally why this midyear review and reset is so important. We're trying to break the habits that we have that we don't want to get out of, because they've always worked, they've always worked, and it's just always.. it's no problem, and it's all I know what to do, and so I'm just going to fall back to the familiar, and we've got to just kick ourselves out of that, and finally admit it's not admitting defeat, it's not admitting fault, it's just admitting that I need to do something better,
Meghan 23:47
and when you look at your numbers and you've seen growth this year, that does add complexity, it's not only about the revenue, it's about how you feel mentally and how you feel the business is doing as well
Collin 24:00
as business owners and entrepreneurs, there's this real tendency and drive to always be asking, what do I add, what do I do more of, how do I increase this, how do I, whatever, whatever, what we need to actually be asking, and now's a really good time to do it, is just what no longer fits, maybe it's the service or a price point, a schedule, service area, marketing message, or your role, and how you lead people. Hello, episode 710 where we talked about our roles and our leadership styles. Maybe, maybe that's no longer working, or an old identity that I'm carrying forward, because I'm still carrying a solo operator mindset and identity into a team of five employees, or a way of working. I'm always used to working until midnight. Now I just can't do that, because other people rely on me. Our businesses are built in layers, right? We, we add a service because a client asked for it. We expand into a service.
Meghan 25:00
Area, because someone just begged you and was willing to pay your extra mileage fee, or you keep that old policy around because it was written years ago, and it works just fine, or that low price that you always keep there as an anchor, because we're just so afraid to change it, because of the number of people that are going to get angry, eventually our business becomes a collection of decisions made by an older and less wise version of ourselves. Yeah, and we don't need to feel bad about that. It is what it is. We learn the lessons that we encounter as we move through business, and we do. Yeah, we get wiser. That doesn't mean we need to scoff at that person that was three years ago, or put down that person that we were. It's just we are continuing to evolve and get better as business owners.
Collin 25:49
So, the question to ask yourself is, if I were building this today, if I were doing this today, knowing what I know, given my past experiences, would I do it the same way,
Meghan 26:01
and of course, that's going to inform some of your goals that you had for this year. Yeah, it could be a yes, it could be a no, it could be what do I need to keep doing, what do I need to stop doing. The goal is to admit what no longer belongs. Yeah, that's important to again shine the light in your face, look in the mirror to truly reflect and go, I thought this was going to work. It's not. I thought I was going to enjoy this. It's not. I thought I needed this. I actually don't. And that's okay to admit.
Collin 26:28
Yep, I know. We really looked into trying to push hard into offering poop scooping services for our business. We really worked to develop the marketing and the messaging and how we're going to do this and the pricing of the packages and all this stuff, and put it out there, and get it into clients, and then we realized, well, I don't want to run a poop scooping business, like that's not what I actually want to do with my life. I can offer this now to like existing clients and keep them happy, as you know, various upgrades, options, and add-ons, but as, like, the core identity of who we are and what we want to build, that's not what I want to do, and so go through your list of your services, your clients, your pricing, the systems, you know, maybe what I designed for my client intake process, like we mentioned earlier, that's a great system to have in place, but does it still meet your current size or your growth rate, if I.. if it's not, I need to jettison that. I need to stop doing that process.
Meghan 27:29
And again, you're not a failure, it's a sign of maturity. You have learned something new about yourself or your business or your community that doesn't want the thing that you thought they wanted, and it's okay to change your mind. You are recognizing that the business has changed, or you have changed. You're not failing because something no longer fits. It's just recognition of a new thing happening.
Collin 27:51
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Meghan 28:29
We've talked a lot about what hasn't worked and what to stop, but we also want to take the other side here and say what has started working. So, with this mid-year review, it should not just be about the problems, it should be about things that have worked, things that have been subtle or things that have been very apparent, but again, shine the light. What has worked? What is good? What do you need to keep doing more of?
Collin 28:50
Recognize that not every win is going to be a 45% revenue jump or 100% increase in new client inquiries, but maybe it's just that, well, your Tuesdays are a little quieter,
Meghan 29:03
or you implemented no meetings Monday, and those have felt fantastic to get off the week on a great foot of having less things to do,
Collin 29:12
or maybe you have noticed that actually I have a lot of clients who actually really love what we do and give me a lot of great feedback, or maybe when I ask my employees about what the onboarding process was like. They've now said that they really love it, and it's really nice. Or maybe I'm not having to be as involved in the day-to-day operations of the business, because my team is working better, because they're confident they've got more. You've set up more boundaries, and those number of phone calls that come out come past 5pm Well, they've kind of gone away, and you just have less dread or just more calm in your life
Meghan 29:49
again. Not every win is going to be super loud and powerful, but I
Collin 29:54
want trumpets and fanfare and confetti and a parade,
Meghan 29:57
and you can give yourself that in. If those wins are awesome for you, but you know, even the fewer emergencies, or the clients who have clear expectations and stop asking you the same questions over and over again, because you have developed that FAQ page, or you have made it more clear on your policies of how you deal with these things, it could also be that your price increase worked. Hey, that your clients stuck around, that you may have only lost one or two, or if your team is more confident than they were six months ago, and your marketing messaging is attracting the right people. These are great signs that you're headed in the right direction. If you have one employee that became a leader and you elevated them to your admin team, think about all the wins that you've had this year, maybe your cancelation policy has also reduced the chaos in your business, in your life, and you are feeling less frantic than you were in January, even though you may be busier because it's the summer, you have more calm about you.
Collin 30:54
We tend to focus on the negatives, they're the easiest, and they relieve a bigger mark on us. So this part, these questions may take you longer to find, but I promise you that they are there. So ask yourself, what feels easier than it did in January, or what problem has actually shown up a lot less than it did earlier in the year. Who on the team is stepping up? What client type seems to be responding best to my marketing, and how good of a fit are they to your business?
Meghan 31:24
Don't forget to ask yourself personal questions as well. Was I able to successfully turn off my phone for 30 minutes and have peace and calm? Was I able to do the hobbies that I wanted to, or to take the time away that I needed, and everything ultimately turned out fine? Or maybe there were a couple fires, but on the whole, everything turned out well, and that gave you peace of mind to continue doing that more again. When we ask ourselves these questions about ourselves and our business and what we want, it informs the decisions that we make moving forward, because our business has changed in six months. It's inevitable, something has changed, whether good or bad. So we have to figure out what that is, and, and what lesson we can learn, even from the good things, and so we can move forward. Think about what the business is asking from you right now. What does it need the first half of the year? The first six months always reveals something, and so your goal, your task for the second half of the year is to figure out what that is, and what it's asking from you, and what you need to do moving forward. If your business is asking you to be more disciplined, how are you going to put that structure into place? If it's asking you to rest, how many do not disturb notifications do you need to have turned on? All
Collin 32:35
of them is the answer. If
Meghan 32:37
you are running around so busy pulling your hair out because you're doing too many things. Maybe your business is asking you to delegate or to stop rescuing the employee that calls you every five seconds when he or she is on the clock. Maybe it's time to let them be a little more independent, so they can enforce your high standards that you have.
Collin 32:57
A big one for a lot of businesses, like we mentioned earlier. What do I take away? Maybe your business is too complicated, and you've just got to simplify, because that is where the chaos is coming. That is where the peace of mind is slipping away. That is where your days are being robbed from you. And because of that, we sometimes we have to lead differently. How I led to get to my business in January is not the same kind of leader that I have to be in June,
Meghan 33:23
because my business needs different things. I have to be introspective enough in order to figure out what that is. The question may not just be what does my business need, but what does my business need from me, me, me,
Collin 33:34
what do I have to give my business, and who do I have to be in order to give that? What tools, what relationships, what connections, what resources, what mindset do I have to have so that my business can thrive? Because your business needs stuff, and you, being the leader, the owner, the grand poobah, you have to give that to that, because if the business is chaotic, it needs structure from you,
Meghan 34:02
and if your team feels unsure, it means they need more clarity from you. They need a stronger leader in a specific direction. If your clients are continuing to push your boundaries, they need courage from you, they need again direction and clarity on what they need to be doing. It takes a lot to be a business owner. Sometimes it means being courageous when we need to have those strong boundaries with clients, or again, we need to simplify. I have grown this thing, and it's kind of a wild beast now. I need to tame it back down. I need to cut things, because the growth is overwhelming,
Collin 34:36
and if you're burned out, your business needs honesty from you to admit you can't do anymore, you've got to stop piling things on,
Meghan 34:46
but it's so fun to keep doing more.
Collin 34:48
It's so much fun, but you have to delegate, right? That's that's that thing. Okay, if everything depends on me, if I wasn't available for an hour, if I wasn't available for three weeks or a month, and you may be thinking, well, that may never happen. Happen, well, if you take a vacation for a week, what's going to happen to the business? Well, that your business is saying, I need you, Collin, I need you to delegate more for the sake of the business, for the sake of your team, for the sake of your clients, delegate more.
Meghan 35:14
So you have to think about what kind of owner the second half of the year for your business, what do they need, what does your business require of you? All of the questions that we've been asking throughout this episode, and there have been a lot, a lot, but they're all part of this midyear reset framework. That first one is, what has this year exposed? What am I still tolerating that I shouldn't be? What has become heavier than it should be? What no longer fits inside my business, what's started working? What are the wins? What's been awesome this year, and what does the second half of the year need from me? Think about these things, write them down, don't try to fix everything at once, fix one thing,
Collin 35:55
because these six questions are really deep. They can take a long time to work through, and you should take time to dig into every single one of these and really understand what your business is telling you at this point, but the temptation, especially as a business owner and entrepreneur, is to try and do everything all at once and have it done yesterday, and then stress about it that we've set these unreal expectations. However, you're going to give one answer to each of these questions, one don't go off on this big long rabbit trail. There's one priority for every single one of these questions. Pick one thing to stop, one thing to simplify, one place in your business that you can strengthen because it's actually working, or that one thing to celebrate, the one thing that you have to decide today to have a better business by the end of the year, and those things, those one answers to these six core areas become your framework and your game plan for the rest of the year. The thing that creeps in during a mid year review, especially during one where I'm not just looking at revenue or whatever, is is shame, is shame, because, because I didn't do something, I didn't get the goal, I didn't do something right, I have failed to do something,
Meghan 37:09
but that's not the mindset we want to take into this mid year review, we just again look at the mirror, what is being reflected back as the business, as the owner, because it's not about beating yourself up for what you didn't accomplish, we can look back, we can reflect over the past six months, and then we can learn lessons, and we can leave the past in the past.
Collin 37:30
It's about telling the truth. Megan, you said that it's about what's being reflected back to me in the mirror. It's being honest about what we see, because we tend to either do two things: everything's horrible and awful, or I'm gonna look at everything for rose-colored glasses, so that I don't see the blemishes, and that everything's fine. I'm gonna go skip through the daisies and the roses,
Meghan 37:46
or I'm so busy I don't have time to even fix one thing, let alone sit down and answer these questions
Collin 37:51
exactly. So now is the time to look ourselves in the mirror, look our business in the mirror, and say, what's the truth about this? The calendar has spoken already, right. The clients have already given you a ton of information. The team is screaming sometimes quietly, or whatever, in their reviews. Your energy levels have spoken for what the business has taken and what it still needs. But are we going to listen to all that? Are we actually going to take the time to look at our business with clear, unclouded, and unbiased, and honest eyes, and ask ourselves, is everything okay? Because I don't want the second half of the year to be a repeat of the first, even if the first half of the year was amazing. I need to find ways to keep that up to continue moving forward and understand that I can't be the same person in the second half as I was in the first, in order to keep that momentum.
Meghan 38:47
Yeah, to keep improving, to keep learning the lessons. We're not going to carry the same frustrations into the coming December that we had the past six months. We don't have to keep tolerating the same problems, or, you know, building the old version of ourselves anymore. We can start fresh today, even if your past six months was amazing. You can still have new goals or a new mindset, a new attitude coming into the last half of the year. We don't want to just finish the year. There's that saying, we don't want to just survive but thrive. But the goal is to finish the year with a lot more clarity than we have, we're gluing the cracks in our foundation, we're having more alignment and more honesty about what our business actually needs. When you know what kind of owner you need to become for the rest of the year, it's going to elevate your business to the next level. We appreciate you joining us today. Thank you for listening. We'd also like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Pet perennials, we will talk with you next time.
Collin 39:42
Bye bye.
