Hello gorgeous!
Is it just me, or did I just blink and lose half a year? It’s not even like it was a blur or anything. It’s just… oops…it’s gone!
I still don’t think I have the same concept of time that I did before C-19, is anyone else feeling the same? Like, everything stopped for a year (let’s be real, 2020 didn’t exist in real time and 2021 is debatable too!), and I still feel like I’m in a bit of limbo over here! Let’s not even mention checking the use by dates on things in the cupboard and thinking it’s still 2022 and things are safe to eat…but I digress!
Welcome to Q3-2023
I don’t know about you, but Q1 and Q2 didn’t quite go as planned in my house (half a year!)! We had a shitload to deal with these past six months, and the world really seemed to be conspiring against us with wide and varied issues it decided to throw at us. But hey, fuck all we can do about it, we can’t change it, all we can do is acknowledge it, see if there are lessons we can take from it, and move on.
Side Note: The boiler is being replaced as I type this. Chris and Matt are here, which is very exciting! So hopefully soon we should have hot water again. ICYMI, we lost hot water in the house on June 13 when we had a midnight leak! Today we also have no gas, but we should have everything back tomorrow!
Check out these tiles that were in the boiler flue that’s just been removed! I think they’re definitely “vintage” lol!
Half Year Reset
I watched this video from Struthless today titled “The Half Year Reset: how to turn your year around” and grabbed his free PDF. If you’ve not encountered Struthless before, this is a great video including reflection and introspection as well as planning for the next 6 months, based on what happpened and what you learned from the last 6 months. Seriously, watch it, it’s under 10 minutes long, but the worksheet will take a lot longer!
I think this video and worksheet are super valuable for my entrepreneur friends out there. It’s a half year review that we all probably know we should be doing, but Campbell has done it in an accessible and fun way, that I think will make it super actionable.
Trigger warning – Struthless used to be an addict, and this is mentioned a lot in his videos.
Every Quarter – Audit Your Stack
Money is a horrible subject, but, it still needs to be discussed. Every quarter I (don’t) like to sit down and look at my bank statements to see what I spent in the same quarter last year, to generally keep a check on things. It’s also super helpful because (if you’re anything like me, you sign up for things because they look awesome at the time, you use them for a week, and then forget about them…until the next annual payment comes out.
Check out my latest blog post for simple tips & tricks on how to do a tech stack audit!
Don’t forget to set yourself a quarterly reminder to keep on top of it! Want to do that in Todoist? Here’s an affiliate link!
Tangentially related, ish
When we talk about saving money and saving time (and a half year reset), we should also address “jumping the gun” as a trap that many entrepreneurs fall into, and I am NO exception!
If you read last week’s newsletter, you’ll know that I announced my rebrand…yeah, I may have been a smidge premature with that…as I sort of, maybe, possibly, have another one this week!
You know you see those people who have a specific thing in every color that the company makes it in (think every color of Nike trainers, or every iPhone color), I think I have that issue with rebrands (oh, and domains too, very spanking ones, but I’ll explain those later in the year when I know what I’m doing with them!).
But this all costs money too!
Ok, playing in Canva for a weekend after a eureka moment doesn’t cost me anything financially, but when you rebrand it can hurt your reach because if you end up changing everything about your branding, people won’t know it’s you. I’m not talking about the Nike’s and Apple’s of the world, I’m talking about us, the entrepreneurs out there who are trying to make sure that their branding encapsulates everything they way to say visually. Now, branding will change as you grow as a person and learn new things, or pivot your business, it has to. But note to self – don’t do 2 rebrands back to back and announce the first one too early!
In Closing
Don’t beat yourself up if Q1 & Q2 went squiffy.
There’s nothing you can do, it’s in the past, and you can’t change it.
That half year has gone.
It is what it is. You did what you did in the situations you were in.
Don’t forget; hindsight is 20:20.
We can question choices, decisions, conversations, launches, finances, newsletters, social media posts, and choices we made, but we can’t change them.
If it feels right to you, work through and process them, and see if there are lessons you can take from them into the future, even if the lesson is “never do that again” or “that worked well, let’s do more of that.”
