The 3 Things You Must Do on July 1st
The 3 Things You Must Do on July 1st
By Dave Lavinsky
July 1 is a critical day in your business. Because it’s the day that officially starts the second half of 2013. That’s right, the year is already half-way over.
So right now is the PERFECT time to take an honest look at your business, see how much progress you’ve made so far this year, and develop your plan for the rest of 2013.
There are three things I strongly suggest you do on July 1 as follows:
1. Give Thanks
I hate to sound too righteous, but I recently watched ‘Girl Rising’ on CNN. The show “documents extraordinary girls and the power of education to change the world.” While this description seems and is uplifting, some of the struggles of the girls profiled seemed unbearable.
In particular, the segment detailing the lives of most girls in Afghanistan left me crying.
So, please take a moment to understand how lucky you are. Lucky that you are even able to run a company and control your destiny.
2. Assess Your Results from the First Half of the Year
You must assess your results from the first half of 2013. Start by looking at your goals and plans for the first half of the year. And then look at your results.
- Were your revenues as high as you had planned?
- Did your profits exceed expectations?
- Did you build as many new products/services as you had planned for the first half of the year?
- Etc.
In assessing your performance, the key question to answer is “why?” For instance, if you didn’t achieve your revenues goals, what obstacles prevented your success? And, how can you overcome those obstacles going forward.
3. Create Your Goals & Plans for the Second Half of the Year
Now it’s time to detail your goals and plans for the second half of 2013. Hopefully if you over-estimated your goals for the first half of the year, you can now do a better job of understanding what is more realistic to achieve in a 6-month period.
Think about this question: what must I accomplish in the next 6 months to make 2013 a great year?
Use this question as a guide in documenting your goals for the next 6 months and detailing your plans for how you will achieve them.
Remember, you still have half the year left. So even if you didn’t achieve enough in the first six months, there’s plenty of time left to make 2013 a banner year.
But importantly, make sure you set goals for the rest of the year, and have a way to measure your progress on them. If you don’t, as some of you unfortunately just learned over the last six months, you won’t achieve the success you desire.