Ep 117: Mid-Year Review
How Creative Pros Can Reset Goals & Reclaim Focus
SUMMARY
Just like a football coach makes strategic adjustments at halftime, successful creative entrepreneurs know that mid-year is the perfect time to evaluate what's working and pivot from what isn't. We're officially past the halfway point of 2025, and if you're like most creative professionals, you've been so focused on staying busy that you haven't stopped to ask the crucial question: Are the systems and strategies you put in place six months ago still serving you today?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Scope creep becomes normalized over time when expectations aren't clearly defined upfront, slowly eroding your profitability and margin.
⚡️ Regular audits of where your time and energy go are essential for maintaining sustainable profitability in creative businesses.
⚡️ Strategic focus beats scattered effort every time—especially in the creative industry where attention is your most valuable resource.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "Don't you want to wake up on Monday morning and go, 'I am ready today for some unexpected opportunities to come our way. And I'm ready today for some creative breakthrough.' The only way that you'll be ready for that is if you reclaim your margin."
💬 "Many of us have goals that we had at the beginning of the year, but sometimes halftime adjustments require shifting goals with the new knowledge that you've gained during the first half of the year. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that."
💬 "The goal of the halftime assessment is not to judge yourself for what didn't go perfectly in the first half. It's about being strategic and intentional with the time and energy that you have now left in the year moving forward."
EPISODE RESOURCES
⚡️Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt
⚡️The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry
⚡️Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
TRANSCRIPT
Just like a football coach makes strategic adjustments at halftime, successful creative entrepreneurs know that mid-year is the perfect time to evaluate what's working and pivot from what isn't. Today we're diving into how to conduct a strategic business review that sets you up for a powerful second half of the year. Let's get into it.
Taking creatives from chaos to clarity. Welcome back to Creativity Made Easy, the podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. This is a podcast for all creatives, designers, photographers, writers, all creative entrepreneurs who are seeking practical, actionable strategies to grow their creative business through efficiency. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative process coach and consultant. And I help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams so that they can create with efficiency as they scale together.
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So let's dive into today's topic. Listen, most creative professionals, they're so focused on staying busy because busy is money, right? And serving clients that they never stop to ask the crucial question. Are the systems and strategies that I've put in place six months ago at the beginning of this year, are they still serving me today? Your business, if I could just speak frankly for you for a second, your business is not the same in July as it was in January. Your team, whether it be just yourself or others, you've learned some things and you've grown. Your clients have evolved. The market has shifted.
And yet we often keep running the same plays over and over and over again from our January playbook. And today we're going to walk through how to conduct your own halftime assessment and make some strategic adjustments that will set you up for a powerful second half. And I want to start with what is what I refer to and what most people would refer to in this situation as the reality check. So what's actually happening versus what you think is happening?
Most creative professionals are making decisions based on feelings and assumptions rather than the actual data about their business performance. Look, being busy, yes, it can equate money, but it doesn't always equate being productive or even being profitable, right? And so there's a difference between activity and achievement.
So what I walk through with my clients in this situation is we use the Eisenhower matrix, which is how you determine what's the most urgent and important work. And so I do this at least once a month, or I brain dump, or I pull from my project management system, all the tasks that are on our plate, or all the projects really that are on our plate, not necessarily the tasks, but the projects, I'll pull them, dump them all out, and I'll get real ruthless about going through this. I've talked about this many times in this podcast before. But I'll get real ruthless going through that list and say, yes, that's urgent, but it's really not super important right now. I would love to get that done, but it's really not important right now. Or you might look at some things, they're like, wow, that's super important, but it doesn't need to happen right now. We will do it, but it doesn't need to happen right now. And some things you'll look at and you'll like, why are we even considering doing this? Why is this on our plate? This is just sidetracking us and taking us down a path that we don't need to go. And those are neither urgent or important. And then lastly, you'll identify what truly is your urgent, most urgent and most important work. And usually if you've done your list right, that's going to equate to about 20 percent of the projects that you have at any given time.
I love pastor leader, Craig Groeschel gives this advice and I use this probably monthly, quarterly somewhere in there every so often to I'll pull up in my remarkable and I'll ask myself, where am I right now? Right now. What are my, how many projects do I have? How many clients do I have? What does my revenue stream look like? What are my processes and systems look like? All that stuff. What's my client satisfaction rates? All things that I'm working on building into a dashboard for our business that we can be able to pull those things in a moment's notice. But I really take some time to think through where am I right now? And the second thing he asked is, okay, well, where do you want to go? And then you can begin to see where you're at now and where you want to go. And you can see there's a difference there, right? There's a mathematical difference, right? I want three clients, but I only have two clients. I want this much revenue, but I only have this much revenue. I want this much project success rate, but I'm only at this percentage right now. And so the third question you asked yourself is what's blocking your progress? Now this is where you may need a coach like me to come in and help really kind of look at this from a different angle and what's blocking your process. Sometimes it's systems and processes, right? Sometimes it's sales. Sometimes it's confidence. Sometimes it's actual creativity and innovation. It could be a myriad of things. It could be your team. It could be bringing on the wrong type of client. It could be offering the wrong type of service. There's so many different things that could be blocking your progress. So where am I now? Where do I want to go? And what's blocking my progress? And then he says, you tackle the problem, right? You tackle that what's blocking my progress. You go after that to solve that problem and then you start all over and then month or three months later you go where am I now? Where do I want to go? And what's blocking the progress? I do that very often and I've walked several of my clients through that as well to be able to analytically be able to see where we're at and where we need to go and what's blocking us from getting there.
There are some common blind spots like we talked about before but I want to just call them out individually here. Scope creep is a real thing. It's a real thing for all business owners, but it's even more so, I think, a problematic real thing for creative professionals. And what happens over time is that scope creep becomes normalized. And if you're not familiar with what scope creep is, I've talked about it many times on this podcast before, but I'll just summarize. Essentially, client comes to you and says, I want this project done. And you say, OK, this is the price it's going to cost to get done. They say, great, let's get on to on with it. But over time, they start to add more and more to the project because you weren't clear and they weren't clear in the beginning about those expectations. And so the scope of the project begins to creep upward. That's why they call it scope creep.
Another blind spot that you'll hit often is different team members maybe operating below capacity. You might be thinking, I don't want to bother that team member right now. They have enough on their plate. But have you really stopped and asked if they do have enough on their plate?
Another blind spot is revenue streams. They might look good on paper, but they're draining you of your resources. Oh man, this client's gonna give me this much money to do this, sign me up. But then you look at your resources and you go, why am I draining my resources? Because you said yes to the wrong revenue stream. And sometimes we need to step back and do the urgent and important, the Eisenhower matrix. Sometimes we need to go through those questions that Craig Groeschel offers us. And other times we just need to audit where our time and our energy is going. This is a concept from Dan Martell. And I have a free template for the time and energy audit to get honest about where you're investing your most valuable resources. So go over dustinpead.com slash free, up the free time and energy audit. I have a little video there explaining how I use it as well.
Michael Hyatt teaches us in his book, your best year ever, which I read every single December as I get ready to prepare. Cause it's a small book. As I get ready to prepare for the new year, his book best year ever. He teaches us about the importance of regular reviews and course corrections rather than waiting until December to evaluate progress. Look, December or the new year only comes around once a year. Let's say you're in business for 20 years. Can you, are you really going to limit your course corrections and your evals to only 20 times in the life of your business? I don't think that's a good call. I think you need to be doing it regularly, at least quarterly, if not monthly, I would be reviewing some of these things.
So let's talk about how to reclaim your margin a bit because the stuff that happens from January to June slowly over time eats away at some margin that you may have built up. Your project management and deadline approach that worked in January, it might be creating some unnecessary stress and missed opportunities by the time we're here in July. There are project timelines and client expectations that may have shifted since January. Client relationships may have evolved in different comfort levels. There's team skills that may have developed or changed your capacity for to be able to hand things off. There's different market demands that require different turnaround times. All of this is stuff that you need to take into consideration.
So in order to reclaim your margin, I offer the do versus due framework, the DO versus the DUE framework. And I want you to review your current project portfolio and build a plan to reclaim your margin for the second half. And you're going to do this by building in summer and holiday considerations. Yes, summer is only halfway over. So you can still plan for those summer and holiday considerations. Summer, yes, now. Holiday at the end of the year. You're going to think about what's going to happen when November comes and we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's all within a span of about five and a half weeks or so. What are we going to do then? Having a plan before that happens will allow you to maintain the margin that you've built up throughout the year. You need to plan for that team time off and the reduced capacity during those holidays and during those times where you know someone may be out or a client may be gone, need to plan ahead, be proactive about those things. Create proactive timelines that account for your year-end rush. Fourth quarter is a great time for business owners because there's a lot of people that are looking to spend surplus money that they have that they need to get done or get a jumpstart on projects for the new year during the holidays. And so there's a great time there, but you have to be proactive about those timelines to account for that year-end rush. And lastly, I would say as you're working through the year, every single year, you should be taking notes for your 12 month outlook moving forward. And I talk about this on my website and past podcast episodes as well. The 12 month outlook is basically saying, are the things, what are the rhythms that happen in and around my business every single year? And when do they happen? When you can identify those, then you can begin to plan and preparation for those before they come up.
Todd Henry, who I love, I keep many of his books on my desk every single day. But he talks about in his kind of cornerstone book, The Accidental Creative, he talks about the importance of creating margin for unexpected opportunities and creative breakthrough. So reclaim that margin for unexpected opportunities and creative breakthrough. Don't you strive, don't you wanna wake up on Monday morning and go, I am ready today for some unexpected opportunities to come our way. And I'm ready today for some creative breakthrough. The only way that you'll be ready for that is if you reclaim your margin.
We talked a little bit earlier about team development, but there's also system evolution that happens over time. Systems that were working for you back in January may not be working for you now in July. The team's capabilities or capacity that you had in January may be different, positive or negative than what you now have here in July. So your organizational structure needs to evolve along with them. Start with your team members and how we can evaluate their growth and new capabilities. So your team has developed new skills, right? What are those new skills? Write those things down. You should be having regular one on ones with your team anyway. So be asking those questions. What new skills have you picked up? What responsibilities that they have taken on need to be delegated or redistributed. This is really good for the Eisenhower matrix You can sit down in your one-on-one and you can dump all the projects that they have on their plate and you as their leader can say these are the things that are most urgent and important to us as an organization and there may be some non-urgent non-important things on there that need to be eliminated. There may be some urgent but not important things that need to be delegated. There may be some important but not urgent things that might just need to be procrastinated or redistributed a little bit. You want to look at optimizing all of these things with team based on real usage data, the teams and systems. What systems are your team actually using and how are they using it? What does that look like for them? Again, in your one-on-ones, you should be regularly asking which tools and processes that are actually being used and ask them for their feedback on it. Always be creating, right, ABC, but always be improving as well. And in those moments and in those conversations, and if you haven't had a one-on-one yet with your team member this year, I urge you as soon as this episode is over to stop and do that and ask them these questions. Find out where the friction exists in your workflows, because in your mind, all the connected pieces may work perfectly, but when the rubber hits the road, it may actually cause more harm than good.
And something that we're doing right now with all of our clients is we're looking, how can we simplify our processes even more? We start with simple processes, but over time they become complex, right? So it's important over time to go, let's simplify back, simplify back, simplify back. You have to constantly be re simplifying your processes and systems. One great way to do this is using the future you note taking methodology. I use this to document knowledge and context for as we're transferring from one project to the next. And so what information gaps have emerged over the past six months that you need to let your future self know about when you pick up that project? Again, there's been multiple recent episodes on the future you methodology, so I won't get too into that. But that's something that you can apply as you begin to take notes for your future self. This will allow you to create some sustainable handoff processes for the second half. Is there something that you're doing or another team member is doing that needs to be handed off using the future you methodology, which is a note taking methodology for your future self to remember the current context will help as you hand those things off. And you can say, here's all the context I have for this project and I need you to take it to the finish line.
You also need to review your client relationships. How have your client relationships deepened? How have they strengthened? Are there been new service opportunities that have emerged that you've discovered through working with your clients? Are there pricing or scope conversations that need to happen? Right? Is there pricing changes that are now possible? Are there scope changes that are now possible? All of these things we need to be reviewing on a regular basis. And Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. That's a mouthful. They discuss in their book rework, which is fantastic. They talk about the importance of regularly questioning and optimizing business systems rather than just accepting how things are done, right? Constantly we go, well, it's just the way we've done it. That's just the way we do it around here. It doesn't have to be that way. You can rework those things just like they tell us in the book and you can optimize your business systems for maximum efficiency as often as you review them.
I want to speak to this point lastly, before we close today about pivoting your second half planning. Many of us have goals that we had at the beginning of the year, but sometimes halftime adjustments require shifting goals with the new knowledge that you've gained during the first half of the year. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think you're a different person this month than you were in January of this year. Your business is different this month than it was in January of this year. You've learned a lot of things, maybe some hard lessons that you've had to learn, but also maybe some really amazing things that you've picked up along the way.
So because of that, maybe it's time to revisit those goals at the beginning of the year. I do this quarterly and I revisit my goals every quarter. But if you haven't and at the end of Q1, we're now at the beginning of Q3 and it's a perfect time to revisit those goals where you said back in January, I want to do this. And again, I'll urge you to simplify, simplify, simplify. If you had 10 goals for this quarter for Q3 at the beginning of the year, I would urge you, maybe you look at what the most important two or three are. What's the most urgent and important two or three goals that you can reset your mind on for the second half of the year.
So I want to give you a few action steps so that you can conduct your own halftime assessment with your creative business. Number one, the most important reclaim your margin and how you do this is you can identify where you can create margin in your current project timeline. So look at your current project timeline, look at your pipelines, look at your production pipelines and start to ask yourself some real critical critical questions and start to build in those buffers for the busy seasons that are coming ahead. Number two, you need to conduct team capability interviews. Just spend 30 minutes with each team member and ask them what's working well, what's frustrating, what would you like to learn or to take on? And you'll be surprised of the opportunities that emerge. Lastly, you need to create your second half focus. Choose those two to three areas where the small adjustments could create significant momentum and then build just a short window, a 30, 60 or 90 day action plan around those things that you can refocus your goals from the beginning of the year of what is most urgent and important.
A few resources I mentioned throughout this. I want to call out again, Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt, the Accidental Creative by Todd Henry, all of these will be in the show notes for you to click the links on as well. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Some different frameworks that I mentioned on here, the time and energy audit, the do versus due framework, the future you framework, all available at dustinpead.com slash free. So go pick those up and start implementing them today.
If there's one thing I need you to remember before you end this episode is I need you to remember that the goal of the halftime assessment is not to judge yourself for what didn't go perfectly in the first half. It's about being strategic and intentional with the time and energy that you have now left in the year moving forward. The past is the past. You can't change it, but you can adjust moving forward. Your January self made decisions with the information that they had available then, but your July self has six more months experience than your January self. Six more months of knowledge, six more months of relationship capital to work with. So the creative professionals who thrive, they're the ones who regularly pause to assess and adjust. So pause, assess, adjust. Pause, assess, adjust. I want you to remember that this week. They're not afraid to pivot when they discover a better path. They're willing to eliminate the good things that make room for great things. Trade in the good for the great.
For more frameworks or resources to help you scale your creative business with systems that actually work, visit dustinpead.com and click on the free resources button. Connect with me on social media at dustinpead. I'd love to hear about what adjustments you're making for a strong second half. Next week, we're going to tackle something that trips up almost every creative professional I work with. Kiss productivity. Keep it simple, stupid, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how to keep your systems simple. KYSS. See how I did there? Changed the I to Y. KYSS productivity. Keep your systems simple. How can we simplify, simplify, simplify? Something that we talked about in today's episode earlier. We're going to explore the most elaborate productivity systems, how they often fail, and how to build sustainable workflows that actually stick. I'll share simple frameworks that help creative teams eliminate overwhelm without sacrificing results, and we'll get into all that next week. But if you ever felt like you spend more time managing your productivity system than actually being productive, that episode is going to be for you. So I cannot wait to spend that time with you next week.
Get out there and create something amazing today. Can't wait to talk to you next time. Creativity Made Easy podcast.