Mid-Year Check-in - How to Refocus and Hit Your Goals In the 2H (#87)

It’s mid-June—which means it’s the perfect time to pause, reflect, and get re-energized for the second half of the year. If you’re a woman with big dreams of getting promoted, leaving your corporate career, or scaling your business, this mid-year check-in is your secret weapon to staying on track.

In this workshop style episode, I walk you through my signature 3-step mid-year check-in process: Reflect, Refocus, Refuel. Whether you’ve crushed your goals or hit some roadblocks, this episode will help you realign with your vision and create momentum to finish the year strong.

Grab your journal (or notes app!) and let’s evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and how to simplify and recommit for success in Q3 and Q4.

🎯 Key Takeaways:

• Reflect on your biggest wins and toughest roadblocks from Q1/Q2
• Refocus your time and energy on the goals that matter most
• Refuel with the right support, skills, and accountability to thrive

🔥 Ready to reignite your goals and finish 2025 strong? Let’s go!

If you're looking for additional support through coaching, visit my website to learn more about working together and my signature program EDIT Your Life™: www.karinfreeland.com/life-coaching

Then book a call here!

Not ready for coaching? Get a copy of my self-help book: Grab Life by the Dreams!

Transcript

Karin Freeland: 0:00

Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help high-achieving career women like you get unstuck, make your corporate exit strategy, and successfully transition to your next chapter. Hi, I'm your host, Karin Freeland, a certified life coach and corporate exit strategist. Whether you want to start a business, become a speaker, or something else, I'm here to give you the tools and strategies to shift your mindset, build your confidence, and take bold actions so you can rock your reinvention. Ready? Let's go. Well, it's mid-June, which means it's time for barbecues, sunshine, swimming, and a mid-year check-in. That's right. You set your goals for the year in November because you're proactive and you take your goals seriously. You refined the plan in December, dotting all your I's, crossing all your T's, and making sure you didn't miss anything. And then you hit the ground running in January. Full steam ahead, no looking back, right? But if you're like most, the rest of the year is a blur and you close your eyes to blink and the next time you open them, it's gonna be November and time to do it all again. Except that you might find you didn't quite hit all your goals. So what if you weren't like most? What if you took a more active role in your goals throughout the year? What if you added a mid-year check-in? Well, that's exactly what I'm going to walk you through today. So this is definitely going to be more of a workshop style episode. So preferably you're going to be somewhere free of distractions where you can write and take notes. But if not, you can always come back and write things down later. The key is you have to actually come back and do the work though. Now, I like to take a three-step approach to my mid-year check-ins. First, we're going to reflect. Then we're going to refocus. And finally, we're going to refuel. But before we dive in, you might wanna take out your list of goals and just have them in front of you as a reference. Now, let's break down each one of these steps so that you can ensure you hit all of your goals.

Karin Freeland: 2:12

The first thing we are going to do here is to reflect. And the purpose of the reflect step is to capture all of your learnings and lessons from the first half of the year. And this is important because when we're moving a hundred miles an hour, which we all are, we rarely stop to take those in. And we might be missing some key insights that could help inform a better path forward or get us back on track. So the first thing you want to start doing is to ask yourself, what worked well in the first half of the year and why did that work so well? So for example, from my own life, I might say niching down in my podcast to really focus on leaving your six-figure corporate job has worked well. I've been starting to see more clients from the podcast and more people booking calls to learn about coaching with me. And it worked well because I'm able to speak to their direct pain points versus trying to address everyone that wants to make a career pivot. And it's a space that I'm really passionate about and I love to talk about it. The next thing you're going to ask yourself is what are those things in your career, in your business, in your personal life that have gone really well and why? And remember, don't just think about this only from a work perspective because you should have personal goals too. So one thing that worked really well for our family this year is not having any travel sports. I mean, financially, it was helpful, but more than that, our schedules were a lot less crazy and we had more family time together, which has been a huge blessing. So feel free to like pause the podcast and just fill this out as you go. Next, you're going to ask yourself, what didn't work as you anticipated? Now, this is not to beat yourself up or to open old wounds, but to see if there's a way to repurpose a project, find a silver lining, or make a small tweak that could yield a new result. So I'll be honest with you. My Facebook group has been pretty quiet lately. I try to bring in new people, but a lot of times they don't introduce themselves, so it's hard to engage or know what their goals are. and i had envisioned when i started my facebook group this really vibrant community where people were always asking questions and we were celebrating each other's wins people were posting things that were motivational and this does happen sometimes but this year has been really quiet now notice that I'm not gonna solve for this yet, okay? I'm just merely taking down the facts. So I'm not trying to fix this perceived issue, but I'm just noticing some of the things that didn't go the way I wanted, okay? So don't attempt to solve for anything just yet. Then I love to take a moment to capture and celebrate your biggest wins. Because as high achieving women, We often fail to recognize our achievements. Why? Because we're so busy trying to hit the next milestone. And we're just like, oh yeah, that's what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to be hitting these goals. But it's really important to show you how far you have come and all that you've accomplished so far. So please don't skip this step. Make sure you write down all of your accomplishments. For me, I was asked to keynote a charity luncheon in Greenville, and it was a paid speaking gig. I also just did a LinkedIn presentation for a women's energy network for their Carolinas and Pittsburgh chapters. I completed my first class for Switch, which is a volunteer organization that I participate in. And I could keep going, but you get the idea, right? We want to capture as many of these as you can. Now, if you've had a particularly tough time lately... Perhaps you experienced a death, a divorce, a layoff, right? Your wins might simply be showing up every day or getting into the therapy that you needed to get through it. So don't think that every... Win has to be some big, crazy accomplishment like, oh, I got promoted and earned $50,000 more a year, right? Achievements really come in all shapes and sizes depending on the season of our life, okay? But they're still valid. They are still wins and achievements. Don't overlook them. Okay, on the flip side, we're gonna take a look next at what were your biggest roadblocks? Is there anything you could do to alleviate that in the future? Or how could you see this as a win instead of a roadblock? Maybe you learned a new skill in the process or met a new person that you wouldn't have experienced if things had been different. Anytime you can shift your mindset around a roadblock, that's another win. Now, for me, one of those roadblocks was not having a virtual assistant. That has put a lot more on my plate this year. But the flip side of that, what's been good is that this year I've also been able to be closer than ever to my potential clients and my content because I'm now creating it all. It's also saved me money that I can now reinvest in my business or add to my salary, which is helpful. And if I want to, I could hire somebody in the second half if I felt like it was needed. So there you have it, the first step, reflecting on on the first half of the year. Now, I know I used a lot of examples from running a business and owning a business, but this applies to women in corporate, women in the nonprofit sector. So don't feel like this only applies to entrepreneurs because it doesn't. You can use this in any walk of life. Now, there may be questions that you wanna add to your reflect section. You might wanna look at, well, how close am I to my targets? Is there anything I could have done differently to hit them? What did I personally enjoy most from the first half? Is there anything my heart doesn't feel aligned to? Right, because sometimes we're hitting all the targets, but we lose passion for the thing that we're doing. And that's okay too, because the sooner you notice it, the sooner you can investigate why and make the necessary pivots.

Karin Freeland: 8:44

The power of a mid-year check-in really helps you reset so you can take the next step and refocus your efforts for the second half. And now we're ready to do that in step two. So step two is refocus. And this step is all about realigning your actions to your most important goals. This is the step where you get things back on track or you make intentional pivots based on the learnings from the first half. Because I don't know about you, but sometimes I get squirrel brain. And sometimes I chase the shiny new object or the thing that people are telling me is the next best way to boost your business. And then I'm like, why am I doing this? Let me get back to what's proven and what's worked for me. Why am I deviating, right? And sometimes I reel myself back in. So the first question you're going to ask yourself is, are my goals still aligned with my long-term vision? Now this could be a simple yes. And then you're just like, yeah, I'm totally on track. Okay, next moving on. Or you might find yourself realizing that you've gotten off track. Maybe you have new information in your life. Like all of a sudden you're dealing with a sick parent or a child with special needs and you find yourself shifting your priorities. You may find you have a new aspiration. Like my husband and I just decided to buy a rental property to create another revenue stream. And now I have a new goal for this long-term vision and have to fit that in with some of my other goals. Now, just again, a note of caution on the whole squirrel brain thing, right? Just because you see someone else doing something, like maybe there's another coach out there that has an app, right? Doesn't mean I need to go out and hire a developer and suddenly create an app, right? And so you have to ask yourself if you've gotten sucked into some of those shiny objects. And if so, it might be time to refocus and go back to your original goals and tactics. The next question you're going to ask yourself is based on your learnings from first half, what do you want to try or do differently in the second half? So if we go back to my example of the slower Facebook group, I started a summer reinvention initiative with six experts in six different fields to where we're going to be guest contributors in my group and help the women in our community reinvent faster and go further this summer. And I'm so excited about it because it's injecting a lot of fresh energy into the group. And if this is successful, then I plan to run it again in the fall with a new group of women and fresh ideas. So if you're not in the Facebook group, by the way, the links in the show notes, make sure you join us for this because we've got experts in the financial space, in LinkedIn and resumes and job transitions. We have another expert focused on style and beauty. So we've got all the things, right? There's six of us. So marriage mentor or home organizing. So make sure you get in there because it's going to give you all the tips and tricks that you need. The next question to ask yourself then, after you've brainstormed, right? So take some time first to brainstorm some ideas about what you could try in your situation. And then you want to ask yourself, okay, what can I automate, delegate, or do to simply free up more time? Now, this again is personally and professionally. So are there things that you can outsource? There is something to be said for paying for speed. But of course, things don't always have to cost you money either. It may be getting your spouse to step up or giving your kids some more chores around the house. One of the things that I've simplified is how often I post on Instagram. And I've actually shut down my little behind the scenes channel because I just wasn't getting that much engagement. And quite frankly, I didn't enjoy having to go in there and constantly try to think of something to post. I've been more focused on LinkedIn lately anyway, which has made things a lot easier for me because that's where my target clients are. So one thing I may consider, is getting a property manager if it becomes too time consuming with the rental. So that's one of the things that I'm going to have on my list of what I might be able to outsource. And it doesn't mean that you're gonna execute every idea either, right? It just means that you're open to exploring all the options. So don't be afraid to write down things that you might not do right now or that you think are crazy. Like maybe if your business is kind of slow, one of your ideas is to buy a business that's already turning a profit. Now you may not go out and do that, but like, let's at least be open to it. Let's at least explore some of these ideas, right? This is a good time to investigate also if you are spending your time on busy work or doing things that are really going to move the needle. This applies to entrepreneurs and those of you in corporate jobs. There's a lot of things we get caught up doing because that's the way it's always been done. But sometimes we need to get honest with ourselves about whether this is working or not. So the question is, to ask yourself is if I focused on one thing for this upcoming quarter, the next three months, what would have the biggest impact? And that's a powerful question that's gonna give you a very clear picture of what you should be doing and committing your energy to. Okay, one thing, biggest impact. What is it? So congrats, you're two-thirds of the way there. One final step and your mid-year check-in will be complete, so don't quit now. And the third step is what I call refuel. And refuel means to get clear on the support and the resources you need to achieve your goals in the next six months. The first piece of this is your network. Because friends, nobody gets to the top alone, okay? Your next level likely depends on your network. Strategic connections are everything. They can lead to partnerships, clients, new roles or opportunities, increased visibility, speaking gigs, right? These are the people who can open the door for you. So what do you need to do to help you achieve your goals in Q2? Who do you need to be connected with? Who can help you? Who can support you? Do you have the right people in your network? Or do you need to ask for introductions to key people? Do you need to expand your circle or just work your network better? I see so many people who connect, connect, connect on LinkedIn. They have these really big, beautiful networks, but they don't talk to anyone in their circle. That is not going to help you right because then when you actually need something or like oh i haven't talked to this person in two years i can't just reach out and ask them for something yes you can but if you had been nurturing that relationship all along it would be a no-brainer so make sure you're working your network it is only as good as you engage and collaborate with it so be intentional with the women and the men in your community The second piece of refueling is looking at your skills and your capabilities. Is there anything you need to enhance in order to get to the next level or achieve your goals? Is there training or further education that you want to complete? It's really imperative that we continuously up our game to compete at the highest level. Now, this doesn't mean that you always need to be earning more certificates or degrees for the sake of earning them or because you don't feel like you're competent yet. You don't feel like you're enough. That's not what I'm talking about. But it does mean that we objectively look at the areas that we want to develop personally and professionally. And this should be very closely aligned to your goals. I remember I had one client. And she just loved learning. She has a love for learning, but she was signing up for all of these courses. And then it was stressing her out that she wasn't completing the courses. And I was like, which of these courses do you actually need for your job? And it was like one of them. And I was like, okay, how about we just put those other courses on the back burner and you just focus on this one? And it was like a light bulb moment for her. And she was like, yeah, okay, that would be so much more manageable. Okay, so we don't need to just be earning certificates for the sake of it. Now that you've done all three steps, yay, go you, it's time to commit to action. What's the first thing you're committing to for the second half that is going to help you level up? And who can be your accountability partner? Will you hire a coach like me or will you enlist a friend or a spouse? Having an accountability partner is key to your success. So do not try to go at it alone. And you'll have a lot more fun if you bring someone along for the journey. Either way, I'll be cheering you on and look forward to you rocking your reinvention in the second half. Good luck. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you're inspired to take action by committing to one of the tips or strategies we talked about in today's episode. If you want more accountability and support, I've got your back. Book a complimentary empowered exit strategy call today. Visit karinfreeland.com to learn more and book your 45-minute session.