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Feature: Your Mid-Year Business Review (4 min)
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It is June. Half the year is behind you, and the urgency that carried January has worn off.
Most owners do some version of a financial review around now. The thorough one is worth doing, and we have written about it: the annual expense review built on a line-by-line read of your general ledger, A Proven Method to Analyze and Cut Expenses. That review tells you where the money went. It does not tell you whether the business is still going where you wanted it to.
That is the question this review answers, and it takes a morning, not a day. Work through five, each ending in a decision you write down. When you are finished you have a single page, with dates next to it, that you can set beside the expense review and read again in December.
Here are the five.
Your customers
List them. For each name, put down what they pay you, how much of your week they take, and whether you are glad when their name comes up. The first two are on your books. The third you already know. Most owners find that a few customers carry the business and a few cost more than they bring in. The costly customers are rarely the small accounts, they are the mid-size ones that feel too important to question. Decide one thing for each: keep as is, raise prices, or let go.
Your prices
When did you last raise prices? If the answer is more than a year, your costs have moved and your prices have not, which means you have been handing out a discount every month since. Pick the one or two prices you will raise, and the date you will do it. Not “review pricing,” a number and a date. The owner who never raises prices is usually the one most afraid of losing a customer, and the customer they are afraid of losing is often the one from the list above.
Your own time
Write down the three things that took the most of your time last quarter. Then mark which ones still need you specifically, and which ones you handle because you always have. We have written about how to find the constraint that is holding your business back, When You Might Be the Bottleneck in Your Business; the middle of the year is when you can still do something about it before the year end rush takes the choice away. Name one task you will hand off this quarter, and the person who gets it.
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What you will stop
Every business carries something past its usefulness: a product that no longer sells, a service you offer out of habit, a commitment you made when the company was smaller. This is the moment to name it, because you still have six months to wind it down rather than drop it in December. For the harder calls, read our prior article on knowing when a product, client, or service has run its course, Not Everything Deserves Another Chance. Pick one thing you will end before the year does.
Whether the business still fits
You built your business for a reason. A year is long enough for it to drift from that reason without anyone deciding it should. So, ask: is the business still doing what you built it to do, for you and for the people who depend on it? You do not have to act on the answer this morning but you should write it down.
The page you keep
That is the review. Five things, one morning, a page of decisions with dates beside them. Put the page where you will see it again, next to the expense review if you keep one. The expense review tells you where the money went. This one tells you whether the business is still going where you meant it to.
This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Consult a licensed professional for guidance on your specific situation.
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