Fall Breakthrough Starts Now: What I’m Keeping, Cutting & Creating
If you're looking for fall to just hit the ground running, and for the last quarter of the year to be really successful so that you can end the year strong, then you're going to want to read this blog where I talk about how your fall breakthrough starts now.
I know we're still in summer, the nicest time of the year for me. I live in North Vancouver, BC Canada, but I'm hanging out in Ontario right now.
I'm going to go over how your fall breakthrough starts now, and what I'm keeping, what I'm cutting, and what I am creating.
Use Summer as Strategic Space
Often, people think summer is a pause because it's beautiful outside and you want to take a vacation, which is great. But it also creates space for you to pause differently, as a prep ground for your Q4 success. It’s the last opportunity before the end of the year to reach your goals, to be able to have the wins you're wanting, and that financial success.
The Hard Truth: Most People Wait Too Long
Here's the hard truth: most people wait too long. They wait until September comes. But then in September (in Canada, anyway), we have a long weekend that starts the whole month, and then school starts. Usually, you don't feel like you're actually in September until the second week, or maybe midway through the second week of September. Well, waiting till then is going to kill your momentum.
High-level leaders are taking action now to get ahead, rather than waiting. By doing it now, you probably have more brain space because you're not rushing here and there, you're not doing a ton of projects. You have more brain space right now to be able to focus on it, to think clearly, to have more capacity and bandwidth to really make some good decisions about your final quarter.
My Three-Part Fall Audit
Here's my three-part audit, my fall audit. It's really simple: what you’re keeping, what you’re cutting, what you’re creating. When you go through that, even just to take two minutes on each part, you'll be amazed at the clarity you get.
What You’re Keeping
You look at your calendar, you look at your business, you look at what you have going on professionally, but you also look personally at what you have going on in your life.
In your business, you might look at your offers, the different systems you have, your team members, clients, and so on. On the personal side, you might look at habits, rituals, behaviors, how you spend your day, how you spend your time, and where you invest your focus.
You’re going to look at all of that and ask yourself, “What am I keeping out of all these things? What still gets the check mark from me?” If it doesn’t get the check mark, then maybe it moves into another category—cutting—or maybe even just weaning off of it.
What You’re Cutting
Are you cutting certain tasks? Is it time to delegate things? Are there mindsets you need to cut? Any negative programming that says, “I can’t do that,” or “I can’t charge that amount,” or “I’m not good enough to do that”? Or maybe it’s the mindset of, “I’m so amazing I don’t need to do anything.” That’s another one you probably want to get rid of.
Are there any commitments that are draining you? Look ahead—maybe you’ve taken a break from some of your commitments. Your board meetings might end, your exercise class might wrap up, your book club might pause, or networking groups you’re part of might take a break. Many activities slow down over the summer, even volunteering. Ask yourself, “Which of these commitments will come back and which drain my energy or are no longer aligned?” Maybe they’re no longer aligned with you, your business, or your personal life. It might be time to cut them.
What You’re Creating
Finally, what are you creating? Based on your goals, what do you need to create to get there?
You may need to create new offers to meet your financial targets. Maybe you need to come up with more content to bring in leads. How about creating more systems to help your business run smoother? Or building more partnerships to grow financially, expand your content’s reach, or help you create the systems you need.
So, what are you keeping? What are you cutting? What are you creating?
If you spend just a few minutes on each one, you’ll complete your fall audit and get yourself into a really great place. If you don’t have a business, do this for your life. If you have a career, do it for your career. Do it for your whole life because as a professional coach, I can tell you that looking at all 10 areas of life is the way to truly be balanced.
How My VA Helps with This Process
Once I have my keeping, cutting, and creating, then I'm going to look to my Virtual Assistants. I have two main VAs I've been working with for over four years, and on my team, I have more VAs who can help you as well. Let me share what I'm doing.
Before the summer, we did a lot of behind-the-scenes content batching. The reason is I was going to spend 10 days in Kenya, a couple of days travelling there, and then three weeks in Ontario. I pre-recorded seven videos, enabling my team to create my YouTube videos with a consistent background. They could also then publish my podcasts and create these blogs. This gave me the space to enjoy the summer and also complete tasks like my fall audit.
Content batching is a great idea. You can even do it now to give you more freedom this summer or get ahead for the fall. We're not too far along. There's still time and space to do it.
Another thing that I have asked my team to do is to go into our systems and clean them up. First into our project management tool, our boards there, clean that up, archive anything that's done, bring back to the top anything that still needs to be finished off.
Looking at our systems that we have, like how we do things, can we do it more efficiently, faster? Can we maximize our time in other ways, so that as we go into Q4 we can gain back some of that time? Also doing things like launch prepping and website updates. Having these sorts of tasks done now is really helpful for Q4.
Then when I look at my keeping, cutting, creating, a lot of the cutting is either me delegating it off to them, or cutting because I'm not going to do it anymore. Also, a lot of my creating is I come up with the idea, but then they implement it. They make it happen.
That's how my VAs are helping me to not only prepare in the summer for Q4 but to make Q4 amazing, because a reminder that success is not solo. It's not just you. It doesn't have to be you. Big companies have so many employees because you need all the little pieces to keep the machine running, and that helps you to stay in your zone of genius, in your core competencies and on high impact, high income-producing tasks, which is where you need to be.
Your Action Step
Spend that time, ten minutes on each area or at least a minimum of one minute on each area: keeping, cutting, creating. Just do it as long as you need to and maybe come back to it a few times. You can get deeper answers.
Once you have that, if you're like, "Oh, I have so many things I want to delegate," or "there are mindsets I don't know how to shift," or "goals and systems I don't know how to create," reach out to me.
So twofold: you get my coaching on one side, enabling you to have the business success you want, but then the life satisfaction you crave. Then, on the flip side, you get a virtual assistant. A vetted virtual assistant from my team who is already trained on so many of the different things. If not, there's a lot of my IP, my intellectual property, my training videos, my systems, my checklists that I give to you, and you work with one of my VAs, so you can just copy-paste and have them do similar to what my VAs do for me.
Set an intention, do this action, and reach out to me, [email protected] or on your favourite social platform, and let's have a chat about how we can help you make Q4 give you the time freedom, the work freedom, and the financial freedom that you've been craving.
Until next time, stay dynamic!