5 Keys to Avoiding a Mid-Year Slump

0:01 Welcome to the coaching equation brought to you by empire partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And yeah, it's kind of late April, early May, as this episode is being released. And right around this time of year, you know, we see something that seems to happen just about every year. to people in general. It happens to business owners. It especially seems to happen in the coaching industry. And that is the mid-year slump. Yeah, like January was here. You were all fired up about those goals, about everything you were going to go accomplish. You got into Q1. Maybe you got knocked around a little bit. You're midway through Q2.

1:22 And so often we see people just starting to go into a bit of a hole in For the entirety of the summer. And then they come back out sometime around September. And it's like, oh shit. I got to get back after it. So this episode is laser focused specifically to help you either get out of that mid-year slump. or help you avoid it altogether, we're going to give you the five keys to avoiding the mid-year slump. Let's go get it. This is episode 50 of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop.

2:05 What's up, dude? What's going on? Happy podcasting day. Happy podcasting day. Hooray. The day is here. It's go time. All right. We're going to go laser focus on this one. This isn't designed to be a really long episode. It's going to be to the point. But it's something that's needed right now. It's going to be that shot in the arm that you need right now. Because look... Right around this time of year is when we start seeing people kind of fall off the wagon and fall into the trap of kind of like what we would describe as the mid-year slump a little bit. And quite honestly, we typically see this hangover last well into Q3 and into the summertime.

2:52 And then people start to wake up around the end of the summertime or the beginning of Q4 and go, fuck, fuck. you know, I'm way off track or I'm not hitting my results or I'm not where I want to be. Oh my gosh, I got to scramble towards the end of the year. So it's a huge gaping hole for most people and most business owners, especially coaches that we see. So what we wanted to do today was give you the top five keys that we've got to avoiding the mid-year slump. And I want you to kick us off with number one here, man, because I think that it gets... really easy for us to not be clear and in tune with the goals that we set at the beginning of the year.

3:39 And you've got something really specific on that. So you have a certain phrase that you like to use for this. Go ahead and give them the phrase. And then, you know, let's get into it. Let's unpack it. Yeah. So it's what you condition becomes real. And this was really just an example of this that was really evident of it. Back when I was doing sales, so this was, let's just call it the 2010s, somewhere in there, before I make myself sound really old. But 2010, I want to say it was 2010 to 2012, somewhere in that zone. I was doing frontline selling, selling coaching. And I had come off of a year where I was the number one sales rep. And I was doing the same activities in that next new year as I'd done before.

4:27 And my results were the same. The difference was my coworkers, they were amplifying their activities and they were getting outside the box. And so guess what? Their production, by the time I hit May, I noticed, I'm like, oh, shit, I'm in fourth place on the team. Didn't feel very good. And I'm like, I'm doing all the things that I always did. And that got me to number one last year. And I'm like, I had that gut check where I'm like, yeah, but that's not working the same way anymore. So what worked a year ago, no longer was going to cut the mustard to get me to where I wanted to be. Now, the thing that was fascinating about this is Tony put an incentive trip out there to go to Fiji. And what I recognized is in that moment when I, when I went, okay, great.

5:12 There's now this new incentive trip. So there's more to earn and more. There's like this big cherry on the cake that's there at the end of the year. If I crush it. But I was like, shit, I'm four people behind first place. Like, had I known this in January, I would have been working my ass off. Well, yeah. The stakes were the same because if I really got honest with myself about it, if I hit the number to earn Fiji, I could have gone and spent a month at Fiji and paid for it out of my own pocket. So my own compelling vision was not there. And my work ethic was, it was lackluster. So when I really stepped back and went, okay, what am I conditioning? Am I conditioning the outcome of Fiji or am I conditioning the same behaviors I had a year ago? And when I got honest about it, I, I was just doing the same activities, thinking that it was going to get me some greater result, and it wasn't going to.

5:59 So the conditioning piece, I literally recalibrated every life, changed the time that I woke up. I changed what I did in my morning routine. I printed out pictures of Fiji and plastered them everywhere in my world. I changed my wallpaper and my phone and my computer. I literally went out and bought a new pair of flip-flops because those are my Fiji flip-flops. So I conditioned a very different outcome and I reorchestrated my world around that one fricking thing. And guess what? By June, I was back in first place. By August, no one was going to be able to touch me. And then voila, Fiji. And then there you go. What was, if you would say, like, the number one thing that you did to kind of to condition it in?

6:42 You just listed a few. But if one of them in particular was really key for you, what do you feel like it was? There, I'll give you two, just because I think they tie together. The first one was I burned the boats. What I mean by burning the boats was there was nothing that was going to prevent me from hitting that outcome. It was nope, like there was just a level of certainty of Fiji is happening. I don't care if I have to triple the record. I don't care what I have to do. I don't care if I have to work weekends, if I have to work nights, if I have to give up holiday, like, that was the first piece is I burned the boats. The second piece was, and this was a huge one, and it was not an easy or fun one to do. I recognized that my peer group was not supporting the outcome.

7:25 So I had friends and family members and I had to set different boundaries and I had to let them know I needed to do certain things. Because coming into springtime and summertime was when everybody was like, hey, we got parties. We're going to go to the beach. We're going on a camping trip. We're doing all these things. What didn't feel good setting those boundaries, but I had to be real about am I fully committed to Fiji or am I like partway committed to Fiji? Yeah. And so burning the boats created some uncomfortable conversations, but it was necessary. Yeah, I know. I love that. And I also think when you talk about some of the visuals and having the pictures ready to go and having them all over the place and having that in front of you. I mean, we've heard a lot about the research on goal setting and the increased efficacy of even just writing them down.

8:15 I think I believe the number if I'm if I'm correct, and I've read these studies several times, I guess 42 percent more effective than just knowing what they are. That's pretty, pretty big jump. So it's yeah, it's huge. So, OK, so number one, what you condition. becomes real, condition it, lock it in. What are the habits, rituals, things that you're doing? And are they adding up to the outcome? And are you paying attention to the outcome and making sure that that's front and center every day? All right. Number two, and kind of piggybacking on that. is, and I think it's like really, I think it's really easy for us to get, this happens day by day, and then it's like death by a thousand cuts, I sort of feel like, but it's very easy, I feel like, to get completely disengaged from the real reason why we're doing what we're doing.

9:14 So going back to what you're conditioning, The other key is really holding true to what the real mission was that you set at the beginning of the year or that's been really front and center for you for a while or whatever. And making sure that you're re-anchored into that. Because, I mean, look, as human beings, we're just not conditioned to do things that are hard or uncomfortable or out of the ordinary. If there's not a really good freaking reason why we're going to do it, we're just not built that way. And I think that a lot of times around this time of year, it starts to get easy where, you know, when we're close to like New Year and, you know, we've just done the big goal setting session for the year.

10:03 And then, you know, we kind of get into like the middle of Q2 and we've forgotten why the hell we were doing this in the first place. So talk about that a little bit, because I think that that's one in particular that we see a lot. And I also think that it's a it's a big it's a big determining factor in in a lot of the loss of passion at this time of year as well. Now you're on the money and I would even just challenge, you know, just if you're listening to this right now. So here's, here's your challenge, pull over the car, slow down on the treadmill for a moment, uh, do a serious gut check and ask yourself, what were my business goals on January 1st, 2025?

10:50 What were the goals that I committed to doing this year? And then here's the second question. So first off, do you remember what they were? If you don't know what they are, that's your first big red flag. Number two is, are you on track? If you don't know what it tells us is it tells us that you're not totally anchoring in. You haven't orchestrated your world to know and to live and eat, breathe, sleep the mission of what you're doing. We all have a lot of altruistic desires and we want to grow our business and we want to help people. But when you become obsessed with... you know, am I on track or am I off track? And where am I on track or am I off track? And what did I, or did I not do? Like, this is a real, like take inventory.

11:32 If you don't even know what your goal was, I mean, dude, how many times have we asked people like, Hey, you came, you know, you did this thing 90 days ago, you committed your business goals. Oh yeah. Let me go drum those up. I can't remember what they were. Like, how many times do we hear people say that? Like, yeah. You want to see Brooke and Ryan go red, by the way, if you guys are into spiral dynamics, we're just like, mother, how do you not know what you committed to 90 days ago of something so critical as your business? And you don't even remember what the hell you committed to. So mission pieces is paramount. Well, and then, you know, at that, not remembering what you committed to goes straight back to the why you committed to it.

12:13 Clearly, it wasn't that important. Yep. You know, because if it was, then you wouldn't be wondering why you've got to do something about it. Right. And this is the other thing. I mean, I think that... And let's just say maybe for a minute, maybe you didn't have a real strong reason why. And that's okay. Give yourself a little bit of self-love right now. If you set goals at the beginning of the year and you didn't have any reason why attached to them, like, okay. But... like henceforth you are you are banished forthwith from the kingdom of fucking empire if you do not have a really strong why behind your goals i'm sorry i just like why i just started watching lord of the rings the other day with my girls and so it's like I just imagine he was the little, not the Prince Charming, but the guy who's in Shrek.

13:18 Oh, Lord Farquaad? Lord Farquaad. Yeah. Hey, assistant number two, Addison, just finished Shrek Jr. this weekend. There you go. That's hilarious. Yeah. So look, here's the deal. If you don't have a strong reason why... You got the staff is going in the bridge. You shall not pass. You're a fart. You are. You're going to be Lord Farquaad. You are fart. You are fart. Oh, man. And the wheels have come off. Yeah, that was fast. Well, so, okay.

14:00 So, so. Number two, just get back to the mission, the real vision, the real reason why. If you don't have one, take some time. Take a couple of days for crying out loud and decide why. I just want to put a bow on it. You should be at least visiting your outcome for the quarter as it relates to your business every day, just one time. It should just be like, what are my goals that I'm focusing on this quarter? What are those core strategies that are going to get me there? If you've forgotten what they are, it means that you're not actually living by them, which means you're not visiting it. So to re-anchor it, visit it daily. Here's my outcome. Here's the core strategies. Okay, cool. If you do that every day, very quickly, you're going to remember what the hell they are.

14:41 So anyhow. Amen to that. Well, that rolls this perfectly, actually, in a number three, which is where's your plan at? And here's the thing. If you listen to this podcast at all, you've heard us talk about quarterly business planning. That is how we structure our business. It's what we teach. It's what we coach. And look, you might be in a position where at this point, I think there are a few different options, right? I mean, number one, you might have a plan that you put in place and you've been actually executing on that plan. And maybe it's not going the way that you thought it would. you know, at which point it might be time to pivot.

15:23 You might also be in a spot where you put a plan in place in Q1 and you went squirrel pretty fast. We see this actually all the time. That's typically what leads to, I don't know. I don't know what my, I don't remember what my, you know, Q1 strategies were. Maybe you went squirrel. Maybe you started the year and you had the goals, but you had no plan at all. Um, and how do we, at this point, if the plan has either a not gone right, B, uh, you know, we abandoned it way too early or C, we never really had one in the first place. How do we write the ship at this point? So just based on that framework, no plan is a plan.

16:07 So let's just kind of, we can kind of bucket those together, right? Yep. So what I would say is the mass majority of people that are in the coaching space or in the consulting space, the mass majority are like, okay, whoever gets referred to me, I'm going to work with them. And they kind of just... They loosely set their sail. So they have kind of a half-dassed, half-baked plan. And they're kind of hoping the universe, they've gotten so deep in the law of attraction that they're like, I'm going to sit and sing Kumbaya and hope to God all the clients come knocking on my door. For some of you. That doesn't work. For some, it happens. Very few. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Just want to straighten that out.

16:48 So I firmly believe that you've got to have both, right? And even we can go into every of the great religions on the planet. You can go into all different forms of spirituality. You can go into the law of attraction. You can go into the universal principles. We can go esoteric here pretty quick. What I would encourage. who's listening that's hearing this, if you are sitting there going either, A, I don't know what my plan is or my plan hasn't been working or I don't have a plan, just take inventory, recalibrate. I've encouraged just different sales teams over the course of time, the first and the 16th of every month, take one hour on both of those days and check in. You used to call it the checkup from the neck up. Check in and go, great.

17:28 Am I on track or am I off track for my plan for this month? And then just figure out what do you need to do? What do you need to adjust? But just carve that time out and hold it sacred. Like it was your child's wedding day and you're, you needed to be there for that hour to see them have their wedding vows. Like, you're not going to miss that unless you're an asshole parent. If you're that person, like hang up from our podcast right now. Could be, but yeah, I'm assuming 99.999% of anyone who's listening to this, like carve out that hour and hold it sacred. Like what does hold sacred actually mean? Like literally set your space, turn off all the electronics. Do not let anything else infringe on that window of time and have your own little checkup from the neck up and check in. Is your plan in play or is it working?

18:09 If you don't have a plan, cool. You've got an hour allocated to create a plan. A one hour plan is better than no plan. So as far as how you approach it, how do you, how do you come at that one, right? Yeah. I mean, I think there are a couple of things that, that I would just mention here. Number one, let's assume for a minute. And I agree. Like if there was no plan, you need to do that. You need to block out a couple of hours, a couple of days, whatever you've got to do to anchor into what you want, why you want it and all of that stuff. And, and then if there is no plan, I would just add one little thing there that, Start small. And this is why we do this in quarterly sprints, by the way, is we have overarching outcomes for the year.

18:49 But then we back into those by selecting the top three to five things that we're going to execute on in a quarter. Here's the other thing, though. So let's assume that maybe you had a plan. Maybe you had a plan and you either squirreled too fast or you had a plan and you're off track. Look, you're going to be a little bit. There's this saying, no plan survives contact with the enemy. And it's the truth. Sometimes the enemy is us, squirrel, right? Sometimes the enemy is external forces, you know, in one way, shape or form. But here's the thing.

19:31 I think this is also why it's really important to know what are the things that you committed to in a quarter and to be revisiting it like you suggested often. Because it forces you into a place where you have to look at it and go, where am I with this? And if there are specific metrics that you can track... You should be tracking those metrics. If there are specific tasks that had to go underneath that bigger overarching strategy for the quarter, you should be tracking where you are with those things. And here's the thing. The the sometimes we're going to try an overarching strategy that flat out doesn't work and we got to abandon it.

20:16 It's like, fuck, I got a hole in my boat. Go plug that thing and throw some shit overboard, you know, so that we're more buoyant here and we don't sink. Sometimes that has to happen. But here's the other part. I think in addition to that. Sometimes we need to simply look and go, okay, well, I may be off track right now, but what are the things that are off track? And what are the things I think I could do right now to get myself on track? Because that's a lot of times we watch people throw in the towel way too early. It's like if the perfect plan that they set out to begin with doesn't work exactly the way that they thought it was going to work, they're like, oh, I'm done. I, you know, I failed again.

20:58 Here we go again. You know? Um, like, no, it didn't work. Like right now we're, we're in the midst of, you know, a plan that we set in place and we're five weeks away from the culmination of needing to button something up and we're nowhere near where we thought we were going to be. Did we quit? No, we looked and went, oh shit, we're off track. We need to recalibrate and figure out, you know, the ways that we can go win now. Love that. So now as we get into number four, this is a big one. You kind of lightly touched on this just a second ago, but I want to go. I want to go deeper on it.

21:40 What do you mean when? So I'm going to use this phrase turning off the noise. What are we talking about when we're talking about turning off the noise? So there's that, you know, the old sentiment of standing guard at the door to your mind. Yes. Yes. And I think now more than probably any other time in history, there's so much noise knocking at the door. There's so many things that are standing on our front patio that are trying to get our attention. Like the zombies are banging on the walls and they're banging on the glass windows. Right. It's for me. And again, I think everyone has their own their own space where this can come into the fold. For me, what I took inventory of earlier this month was social media on my cell phone.

22:25 Hmm. And what'd you do with that? I'm like, dude, I'm calling people out today. Pull over again. Yeah, you are. I don't care if you're driving. I don't care if you're on the freeway, get off the lane, get up the next exit. This is your call. Uh, if you guys go check your cell phones and swipe left, not because you're on a dating app. I don't even know how that works. It's like left or right. I don't know. Whatever it is. But Go to your settings, go pull up your screen time and go look at how much time you're averaging per day and per week on your cell phone and see where your eyeballs and where you've let your guard to your mind has been a little bit lax. Where have you let the drawbridge down and on your empire? Lord Farquaad is coming back.

23:06 But like... Like really check it. And for me, it was one of those moments where when I looked at my screen time, I'm like, shit, social media was just sucking me in. And I just made a decision in that moment. I go, cool, deleting the apps off my phone, they're gone. And lo and behold, I've got an extra two plus hours a day that I can be fixated and focused on my outcomes and my goals. And I'm back on track and I'm getting way more done than I was the month prior. So, again, these things are literally they have billions of dollars that are set up to grab our eyeballs and grab our brain. Yeah. And pull us in.

23:46 And if you think you're strong enough to avoid it and dodge it, they've got your number. They know the dopamine hit. They know how to trigger your hormones to be addicted to what they got. And I'm here to tell you, you are not stronger than their billions and billions of dollars of scientific research of sweeping you in. Too much political unrest. There's too much craziness happening on the planet. There's too much that's grabbing everything. So that's, I don't know if that's all that you wanted from that, but that's the big piece is like stand guard at your mind. Yeah, no, I, I, I'm in total agreement with that dude. And I also think that, I also think that we've got to avoid, when we talk about turning off the noise, a lot of it is the external bullshit. Earlier you kind of referenced your, also your, your, um, uh, your inner circle, right?

24:33 And the people that are around you and who you're spending time with. I think that's a huge part of it as well. Because if you're not around a bunch of people that are going to stay centered and focused on their goals also, you're in deep shit. Good luck with that. Again, another thing that we're not really built to do most of the time is to be like the one in the 10 people that are around us that is really staying focused, you know, and true to goals and having a why and all that stuff. I think the other thing on this one too, is we also have to avoid the distraction that is us. Right? You know, I was just saying this semi recently, having a really nice conversation with our mutual friend, Mariana Lacombe.

25:17 And we were talking about some of the distractions that we put in our own way. And a lot of times when you find yourself in a bit of a mid-year slump and things are a little off track, it gets way easier to have those distractions. Like one of the examples I gave when I was chatting with her. Uh, and I'll totally out myself here. Like when I'm not focused, I will seriously be like middle of the day and be like, you know, I ought to go to the grocery store right now. You know, there we, I know, I know I just spent fucking two hours doing that with my wife on Sunday, but you know, there's that one thing, there's that one thing that I need and I probably better go get that right now.

26:03 You know? Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, here I am another hour and a half down the road and I'm fucking around in Whole Foods and I'm like, what am I doing with my life? So you got to be willing to avoid the distraction that is you as well. And by the way... How do we turn off the noise externally? How do we turn off the noise internally? Number one, easiest way to do that is to know why the hell you're doing what you're doing and why it's a must for you to stay focused and take actions that are uncomfortable. All right. So let's polish this one off, brother. All right. Number five is keep it fresh.

26:44 I mean, this is definitely the time of the year where even when you are on point, like it is total. It's totally natural to just kind of be in the motions like all of the excitement of the beginning of the year is gone. Um, and I think we can kind of just find ourselves a little stuck in the messy middle. So what are some of the big keys that, that you find in keeping it fresh, avoiding not, you know, boredom stale, however we want to describe it. How do we do that? One of my mentors in my early 20s, so gentleman named Brian Buffini. So he was in the big in the real estate world, but he had this piece.

27:24 And again, I'd heard it before with like Pavlov's dog and some just just some other ways of where it was referenced. But for whatever reason, it really hit home when he brought it up. And he said, whatever is rewarded is repeated. Yeah. And the way that he laid that sucker out, it was so fascinating because I was like, wow, all these people that were around me, when they would start new projects, they would be rewarded. When I thought back to like school or high school or, you know, my childhood years, my formative years, you know, it was like, oh, cool. You started a new sport. And there was like celebration around. Oh, cool. You're going to play basketball. Woohoo. But there was very little reward or excitement or celebration when you're in the middle.

28:07 It was like practice sucked. Injuries in the middle sucked. Allen Iverson, we talking about practice? Yes, Allen, we're talking about practice. So for us, like you fast forward and you kind of think of what gets conditioned when you think of where we're at. For a lot of people, their biggest nemesis – I mean you just actually referenced part of it. It's when boredom hits. Yeah. boredom is actually one of the biggest killers for us. Because when you're in that middle zone and you're like, I'm doing the same thing I did yesterday. It's like, oh, Groundhog Day. Okay, cool. Actually, that was February. But like when we're in this zone of doing the same things and doing the same activities and we're caught in that messy middle, are you grenading your world to create some variety because you're bored?

28:52 Or are you fixated on that outcome? And you're so damn mission driven that you're finding creative ways to make the boredom exciting. Like we're mission driven. We take the boring shit. Like have you ever washed dishes? You made washing dishes fun. It's like you cranked up the music. Like you turned on the lights. Like you turn it into a party. Like most people hate doing dishes. It's why it backs up because they haven't found a clever way to make that fun and keeping it fresh. Yeah. Same thing's true with our business. I'm talking about the same things. I'm putting the same stuff on social media. I already wrote an email about that. Like, yeah, it's because that's the stuff that's going to win and that's going to help you live out your mission. It's not the new squirrel thing every other time you turn around where you're getting addicted to the new thing, the new thing, the new thing, the new thing.

29:34 No. Yeah. Condition yourself to do what's tried and true. Condition yourself to the stuff that's working. Track it, measure it, live it out, and stay fixated on the prize, which is helping your clients, not the day-to-day grind of the things that you've now labeled boring. I love that. And I'll put this little cherry on the sundae before we get out of here. I think this is so vital. This last one is so, so, so important. And it may seem trivial and simple. But here's the truth. Real success is built by doing the things that need to be done over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

30:17 It is not by grand gestures. It does not happen in a vacuum. It does not happen with all the big things that you think you're doing or you're deciding you're going to go do. It happens with those activities that you're willing to show up and do over and over and over and over and over again. And that's exactly why it's that vital to make sure that you do keep it fresh. Because if you're doing the right things, you got to just keep repeating it. Most people stop short of success because of the fact that they just quit doing the things that they need to do to get there. It's that simple. Uh, dude, this was laser focused, uh, and, uh, I hope super effective. So if you're finding yourself by the way, in the middle of that mid year slump and you want to get yourself the hell out of it.

31:02 And by the way, get yourself around a bunch of other crazy people who want to do exactly the same fucking thing. we want to invite you to come to the event in June. We've got our next live event in person in the Vail Valley coming up June 5th through the 7th. It's going to be absolutely epic. Our partners in Quantum Empire are going to be there as well. Vanessa, Dipika, Colleen. We've got some guest speakers. We're going to be planning out... the next quarter while diving in on some cutting edge strategies in every single area of your business. It's going to be off the chain. If you want to do that, you want to check out what we're doing, go to www.quantumempire.io forward slash event. You can see all the details you can apply and register there.

31:44 My man, good stuff today. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Until next time, take care. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we'd be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.

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