Blog Post

Mid-year business review

Lisa de Caux • 27 September 2019

I knew that I’d have a formal business review exercise once my little girl went back to school in September. The start of the academic year, halfway through my business’s tax year, felt like the perfect time to take stock of the situation.

For this kind of exercise, I prefer to start my thinking in advance, before I actually put pen to paper (or type words on the screen). I find I often do good business thinking at unrelated moments – cleaning the bathroom is an excellent example!

A bit of coaching

In July, I was lucky enough to receive a ‘birthday treat’ from Mira Rutter – to celebrate her birthday she was offering 20-minute coaching sessions. She came across me via LinkedIn and asked if I’d like a birthday treat. My birthday's in July too, so it felt just right! I was glad to talk to her – she’s a life balance coach, and looks at business and personal balance.

When I completed her pre-session questionnaire, I was thinking that I just needed to be more organised in order to fit in domestic jobs while working on and in my business. I work from home and these things tend to prey on my mind… When I worked in an office, that big pile of washing wasn’t there when I made a cup of tea!

Mira asks questions from different angles. There’s more than one way to balance your life, and Mira encouraged me to consider that. It’s possible to make business changes that are good for the business and good for your personal life too.

This conversation was still on my mind as I started my mid-year review, and I got to thinking about where I’d made changes to my business plan for the year, why I’d made the changes, and what the knock-on effects were.

Having a plan at the start of the year

I write a business plan at the start of the calendar year – it sets me up for the year ahead and makes sure I’ve thought about all the parts of my business. I have a number of broad headings for my business plan, and then I set more detailed targets for each area.

Clients are my first priority, and after that I have marketing, accounting, training/CPD, SfEP (the Society for Editors and Proofreaders is so important to me that it gets a separate heading!), operations, and IT.

Two main changes to the plan

Looking at everything I’d planned in January, I’m glad to have had direction, and I’ve followed the plan for most areas, but it’s been important to me to be able to change that direction when needed! I’ve had two areas where I’ve made significant changes to the plan.

1) I invested in PerfectIt, ‘Proofreading Software for Professionals’.

Making this change was all about efficiency, and I’m really glad I changed the plan.

2) An opportunity came up, via LinkedIn, to talk about being a freelancer in publishing at a Society of Young Publishers (SYP) event in Leeds. I found it a really worthwhile event – and it encouraged me to write my first blog.

IT: PerfectIt

PerfectIt falls under my IT heading. It was very easy to download and set up – once it’s been installed, it’s possible to use straight away.

It’s highly recommended by proofreaders and editors and, once I’d tried it, I could see why.

To get even more out of it you can set up ‘styles’. For example, you can tell the software what you want it to look for when you are editing/proofreading for a particular client.

So I sat down one weekend, with the video tutorials open in front of me, and I set up ‘styles’ for some regular clients. If a client prefers Chief Executive to chief executive, PerfectIt will highlight all instances so that I can easily take a look at each one and check whether this is OK. It’s really useful as there can be reasons why you should accept a change from the usual writing style – PerfectIt helps make this process more efficient.

I’ve only scratched the surface so far with PerfectIt – there’s more to learn! This has had a knock-on effect on my studying plans– I’d planned to take an OpenLearn course (Exploring books for children: words and pictures). Instead, I’m learning more about wildcards, so that I’ll be able to use the PerfectIt software more efficiently.

I’ll come back to that OpenLearn course though!

Marketing: networking

Trying a little more networking (to attend at least two events) had been part of my plan.

We have four Manchester SfEP local group meetings a year, but I didn’t include those in my networking goal. After all, the SfEP has a heading all to itself in my business plan!

Becoming a speaker was unexpected, and more than a little nerve-wracking! Talking about my freelance experience to others has consolidated my own thinking about the business. And that kind of public speaking challenged me in a different way – my comfort zone was left far behind! I spent quite a lot of time rehearsing to our pet hamster…

I’m going to be speaking at an SYP event in Manchester in October (more rehearsing in front of the hamster!), and it has encouraged me to think about how I’ve grown my business.

Marketing: LinkedIn (where the plan didn’t change)

The main focus of my marketing this year has been LinkedIn.

At the SfEP conference in 2018, I attended a session on LinkedIn by John Espirian. It had a big impact on me and offered a blueprint that I was sure I could follow. This mid-year review coincides with a year of commitment to LinkedIn and I couldn’t resist including it here.

#LinkedInLearnerLounge

After I’d seen the #SfEP2018 session, I became a dedicated follower of John Espirian’s #LinkedInLearnerLounge.

One of my marketing plans was to revisit John’s starter guide after a year and check that I’d completed it all. I had completed it, but there’s always more to learn, and, as my business changes and grows, I need to make sure that I think about how I engage with LinkedIn too. Some of the actions have become regular items on my to-do list.

I thought I’d see what my data analytics showed me… The number of connections shows clear growth from September 2018, when I started focusing on LinkedIn and taking action.

This is a good early milestone, but I’ve adopted John’s 30-month mindset!

What should I do as a result of my review?

Writing this blog has really helped to bring my thoughts together. I won’t leave these thoughts behind though – now I need to decide how I can use the mid-year review to help my business.