#50 The Mid-Year CEO Reset: Why Better Decisions Beat More Work

Show Notes

In this episode, Steph breaks down why reflection isn't a luxury reserved for slow seasons—it's one of the most profitable leadership habits you can build.

Because better businesses aren't built by people who simply work harder. They're built by CEOs who pause long enough to replace assumptions with evidence.

You'll learn how to evaluate where your time, energy, and money are actually producing results, identify what's quietly draining your business, and make confident decisions based on data instead of panic.

If you've been feeling like you're doing everything and somehow getting nowhere, this episode is your permission slip to zoom out before you sprint into another six months.

Mentioned in this Episode

🌿 The Rooted Reset

If this episode hit home, chances are you need dedicated space to think like the CEO your business needs.

The Rooted Reset is an intimate women's business planning retreat where we step away from the day-to-day, evaluate what's actually working, and build a clear plan for the year ahead. You'll leave with decisions made, priorities aligned, and confidence in where you're headed next.

👉 https://www.stephrubio.com/rooted-reset-business-planning-retreat

💛 Connect with Steph on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/virtually_stephrubio

In this episode, we cover:

1. Why activity compounds just as much as strategy
2. The hidden cost of staying "busy"
3. How reflection stabilizes your nervous system and your business
4. Questions every CEO should ask during a quarterly or mid-year review
5. How to know what to keep, stop, simplify, and start
6. Why data—not emotion—creates confident leadership

Memorable Moments

"Activity compounds just as much as strategy does."

"Reflection isn't about looking backward. It's about collecting evidence to make better decisions moving forward."

"Pausing to reflect is how we replace assumptions with evidence."

"Data is how you stabilize and act on reality instead of reacting on emotion."

"Reflection isn't something you've earned after the work is done. That's where you start and where you end as a CEO."

What is Rooted & Relentless?

Rooted & Relentless is the business strategy podcast for entrepreneurs building service-based businesses designed to grow, adapt, and last. Business strategist Steph Rubio shares practical guidance on a range of topics meant to help you sell, scale, and stabilize.
Think sustainable business growth, revenue strategy, systems, capacity, client experience, and the founder leadership required to turn your skills into a successful, sustainable company.

Steph Rubio: Activity compounds just as much as strategy does. The question is if you're compounding something that's actually worth repeating, if the activity and the inputs that you're putting into your business, where you're spending your time, energy, and money is where you're meant to. Are you getting distracted and spending hours building a bot when you should be spending that talking to warm and hot leads to convert them I'm Steph Rubio, your go-to for honest, nuanced conversations about growing a business and building a life that you actually freaking love. Around here, we're rooted in who we are, even if we're still learning to love her, getting clear on where we want to go, and we're relentless in our pursuit to get there. We talk about what it actually takes to build and lead a business that can sustain growth, weather market shifts, and support the life you actually want from strategy, sales, and systems. To relationships, reputation, and the self-leadership required to navigate all the messy decisions in between. Because growing a business shouldn't mean dragging yourself right back into survival mode. Again. And building one on your own terms requires more than recycled advice and someone else's blueprint. If you're ready to think deeper, lead better, laugh a lot, and possibly cry a little, maybe laugh until we cry, if we're lucky, then hit subscribe and let's get into it. This is rooted and relentless. Grab your notebook and hold on to your tits. This one's for you. If I asked you to make a really important decision in your business today, whether that's launch something new, hire a teammate, raise your prices, invest in marketing support, or even pivot your entire business. Would you be making that decision based on what you know or what you assume? What everything feels like right now? Or filtering it through what all of the noise online, what everyone is telling you is most important right now? Because that's the difference that reflection makes. reflection isn't about looking backwards for nostalgia's sake, right? It's about collecting evidence so that you can make the best decision moving forward based on where you're trying to go. So many business owners, most actually want better results in whatever that looks like. That's more revenue. That's less turnover with their team. That's more seamless delivery for their clients. Whatever they're after, everyone has goals that they're chasing, whether you've actually sat down and acknowledged them or not. You're leading and growing a business. So you want results somewhere. And most people want better results. But better results don't come from doing more and more and more all the time, which is what we typically lean on. If I just work harder, if I just post more content, I'll get better results. That's not how it works, unfortunately. But fortunately, I'm about to tell you how it does work. better results come from making better decisions about where to spend your time, energy, and money, the three most valuable resources you have in your life and business. And you can't make better decisions if you never stop long enough to evaluate what's actually happening. and base those decisions off of facts about your business. Not what someone else is recommending. See, if we know that reflection is important, pausing to reflect and pull it up, then the question really becomes, why aren't we doing more of it? I mean, I just came off of two weeks away. And in that two weeks, while much of it was vacation, I was visiting friends, family, just taking much needed time away to s reflect like on myself personally, I also Spent time reflecting on my business. And the clarity that comes from that is insane. I'm not the only one who will tell you that. I've had three different conversations: another one with another business consultant, one with another business coach, and another one with just someone online, all about getting more clarity and tweaking their offers as a result, how they got distracted by what other people were saying or something like that. And these are really smart people, okay? But they hadn't paused to reflect. We're working and we're making decisions quickly. So the question becomes. How do we pause and reflect? Because the reflection is the power move. But why aren't we doing it? And what I found is that it's typically because reflection does not feel productive. It doesn't check anything off of your to-do list. And we all know the dopamine hit that comes from checking something off that to-do list. Nobody sees you doing your reflection. Maybe you post about it, maybe you don't. It doesn't generate a cell in the next hour. So we convince ourselves we'll look at the numbers later, that we'll review when things slow down, that we'll think a bit more strategically and we'll pull it up and we'll reset our goals or even set goals to start with after that launch. But spoiler alert, things never slow down. I found especially if things do slow down in my business, they pick up crazy in my life. So the trade-off is still the same. There's never a capacity For this reflection that we feel like isn't productive. But what I've learned after years of consulting with business owners and working with leadership teams of small corporations to help them decide where they're spending their time, energy, and money to get the results they want over the next year is this. Successful businesses that sustain through market shifts like the one we've seen over the past couple of years, and the market shifts still set to come, because it always does change, it's ever changing based on what the market, the people that are buying need, want, et cetera, is they're run by leaders. Successful sustainable businesses are run by leaders. who create a rhythm of observation, evaluation, and adjustment. They don't just work in the business. Execute, check off, deliver, slide by the CDR pants, wipe the sweat off your brow, kind of celebrate this week, maybe because you made a sell, rinse, repeat, and do it again next week. You feel like you're on a hamster wheel. And the moment one thing goes awry, the moment you do have to take a day off that you didn't plan, the whole thing starts to fall apart, or so it feels, because you haven't stopped to reflect if it actually is falling apart. These leaders regularly stop and look at the business and ask What's actually happening here? We said we would do these things. This is where we would spend our time, energy, and money. Are they working as intended? Should we lean in and tweak anywhere that isn't? Is there something working really freaking well that I should rinse, repeat, and do more of? That should be informing where you spend your time, energy, and money. Because the truth is If you don't intentionally evaluate your business, it's going to just keep giving you more of what you have, more misaligned clients if you continue to take misaligned clients because you're just desperate for the revenue. Refle the moment that you interrupt the pattern. It's where you decide what deserves to continue, what should be taken off your plate completely, what needs to change, and what you're no longer willing to carry into this next season, whether that's an actual season changing, whether that's quarter to quarter, whether that's year to year, whatever the season you're moving into is. That's why I think that reflection is one of the most valuable yet underrated skills of a CEO. Pausing to reflect is how we replace assumptions with evidence. Instead of saying nothing worked this year, something's different, people aren't buying the same, you can look at your numbers and see if that's actually true, or if it just felt that way emotionally. Instead of saying, I think everyone stopped buying, they're not buying the same, you can evaluate your lead sources and see if they've changed, if you're still converting at the rate you were last year. Instead of reacting emotionally to one bad month, changing your offers, adding more, giving yourself more to do, you can pause. You can lead from the patterns, learn to start the patterns. If this happens over one month, that's probably not a pattern, but you can pay attention to it. If it happens consecutively, it's probably a pattern and a signal you should pay attention to. That's what strategic leadership looks like. There is a cost associated with staying busy, constantly doing, doing, doing, working, working, working, and not pausing to evaluate. That cost looks like creating content that is not producing leads. Your content serves a purpose, which is to create leads. That is your inbound marketing. Then your sales function is meant to convert those leads to clients and make money, right? These are normal functions of your business. If you just stay busy, you're not evaluating if it's the content you should post in the place you should post. And it may not be aligned to what you're selling months in advance with the lead time you need to market and then sell whatever that offer is. I am currently actively marketing and selling the rooted reset in October, an annual planning event that blends retreat, reset, love on yourself. We're talking about reflection. It's not just for your business, it's for yourself, right? And a day to plan for the business. Pull it up. Evaluate and plan the year ahead. Remove the emotions, do it in a room full of smart ass people and lay your plan so you can move securely, right? That's in October. I've been marketing since June and a little bit before, end of May, I sold my first spots. So there's lead time to this. If you don't pause to look at that and plan ahead, then you are reacting. And then when you don't get the results that you're hoping for, that you haven't really even planned for, it spirals your nervous system out of control. Other calls associated with not pausing to evaluate and just continuing to execute and do do do. Saying yes to clients that you should not. If there are red flags in your sales conversations with clients and you say yes anyway because you need the money, you're scared to hold out for the right clients. You're scared to lean in and pause and look at your positioning and your messaging to make sure it's calling in the right clients and hold the line for those clients. That misalignment doesn't change when you start working together. Likely in three to six months you'll want to offboard that client because you'll actually start finding clients that you want. And each situation is different and unique. Sometimes revenue is queen and it makes sense to take the money. There are differences, there are exceptions to every rule, but saying yes to misaligned clients has a cost. Usually it is your nervous system. A cost look can look like carrying offers that no longer fit and trying to shove people into boxes that no longer work. It looks like spending money without measuring ROI. Investing your time, energy, and money is necessary to grow your business. Maybe you're investing in programs, maybe you're investing in support, but you also have to measure the ROI of that. If you're going to events to network and meet people, Are you measuring there was actual ROI from that? Did you meet people? Did you get opportunities? Did those opportunities convert into what you wanted to? You have to measure the ROI of where you're spending those investments to know if you should continue to do so or if they're a waste of time, energy, and money, right? The power in zooming out is that you can stop wasting time, energy, and money. It starts to feel counterintuitive when we just said most of us don't pause because it feels like we're not being productive. When we pause and we just think and we plan and we do this abstract stuff, it feels like it's not productive. But what you're actually doing is just creating the same month over month of what you're sitting in right now. So if you don't stop and interrupt that pattern, if you don't stop and reflect on what's working and what isn't, and then align with the direction you're trying to go in, you're just going to create the same friction that you've been creating. Activity compounds just as much as strategy does. The question is if you're compounding something that's actually worth repeating, if the activity and the inputs that you're putting into your business, where you're spending your time, energy, and money is where you're meant to. Are you getting distracted and spending 12 hours building a bot when you should be spending that 12 hours talking to warm and hot leads to convert them because you need money? Are you using that as a distraction to hide from the activities that you should be? Or are you just unsure of where you should be spending your time, right? And here's the thing to remember that reflection isn't about beating yourself up about what's not working. When I talk about sitting down reflection, there is a qualitative component, right? There's also a quantitative. So yes, looking at numbers is very helpful. Look at the leads that you have. Look at the ones that are converting into paid clients. Look at your main lead source and these things. And if they're not what you want. So there's a component of that, but it's not about like, no, I'm not making the money. I want this freaking sucks. It's not about beating yourself up. It's also not just about celebrating wins and patting everybody on the back for an hour. It's not journaling because Instagram told you to. Reflection is asking, what is this telling me? Really? It's learning to read it. What is this telling me? I like to do this when I do a quarterly business review in my mastermind. We do both. We look at the actual numbers, I have them pull their numbers, and then we go function by function, marketing sales, operations, and like, What was working, what wasn't, where was your primary lead source. And then we go back through and we kind of green and red. I'm gonna tell you some of that in a minute and some lenses that you can evaluate as a mid-year check-in because we are into July and it's an excellent time to do a mid-year check-in for yourself and just kind of reset and rebalance where you're going in the year ahead. And it's an excellent idea to do that annually. Shameless plug. This is exactly why the rooted reset exists. But what I want you to do right now is think through. Learning to do these reflection points and thinking through what is this actually telling me? When they go back and look at this, I tell them just highlight green and red. Green is the things going really good. And when you're looking at numbers, that's pretty easy. If your revenue goal was ten thousand dollars this month and you made fifteen thousand, that's green. But that's not good enough. We're not just like, hell yeah, we made fifteen thousand dollars this month. I do want you to do that. I do want you to celebrate. I could do a whole other podcast episode on why. I lovingly force function my people to celebrate. But the point is, what is that telling you? Why did you make $5,000 more this month than your goal? What did you do? What worked? Because that is telling you what to repeat. So we want to focus on the green and we all want to focus on the red. So take that same thing. If it was $10,000 this month, or let's just use a different one because everyone thinks about revenue. But what about like, your visibility. If you plan to guest on two podcast episodes a month, because that's where you want to be visible and share your expertise to get new eyes, which are leads to talk to and convert. Okay. If you want to do two a month and or six a quarter, right? And you only did four, why? Look at that. That's red, right? That's under the number. Why was it? Was it because of your outreach? Was it because of something else? So then you can know if it was because of your outreach and you didn't reach out to enough or for every three that you reached out to, one said yes. You need to up your number game a little bit. That's data. What is it really telling you? That's the point of reflection. And the way that that will stabilize not only your business, but your nervous system is out of this freaking world. Because you'll move away from a reflection point like that with this full-body confidence in the next moves you're about to make because you're sure of what's happening, because you're just aware, because you're leading your business. Data is how you stabilize and act on reality versus reacting on emotion, what feels good or doesn't right now, or reacting on what people are raging online this month that is the most important thing. It's going to happen at the end of the year again. We'll put out predictions for where the market's going next year and what's most important. And people will react to that. Versus stabilizing. What I want you to do is learn to filter these things through your own business and your needs and your goals and where you're going, because that will tell you where you should spend your time, energy, and money, which might be different than where I should be spending mine. So here are a couple lenses that I want you to look through and filter through. Every CEO should be asking these questions or some version of these questions at this point in the year for a mid-year reflection. So if you haven't already, block an hour and 90 minutes on your calendar, and I want you to ask these questions. Looking at your revenue. your growth, right, to start with. Where are your leads actually coming from? Are those leads converting? What generated the heart highest ROI? What looked successful or felt successful but wasn't. A great example of this could be maybe a viral social media post. Got a lot of attention, looked successful, but did you convert anything off of it? Did it actually help you? Did you add people to your email list? What are your goals? Then I want you to look at your capacity. You and your team, if you have a team, were you at over under capacity? Because here's what one thing can tell you. Maybe you want more revenue and you're thinking you want more clients, right? More clients is more revenue. But if you answer that and then you also get to capacity and you're at capacity, pray tell how you're going to serve all those new clients. These are signals. This is data that will tell you where to lean in and focus on your business so you can scale and grow. What in your business is taking longer than it should? And where can you create capacity? Now, you may not be able to answer that question because that typically is like an operations question. So you might need some insight from an operations person. But my encouragement to you is looking at where you create capacity when you're asking a question like that. Creating capacity looks like if you can put some systems and automations in place. So let's say that you have 10 clients, and if you can put systems and automations in place that take five hours off of the work you do for them. Maybe that's adding another client. You created capacity, right? Then we want to move on to looking at the experience of all of the stakeholders in your business, everyone who has a stake in the success of your business. So your clients, your collaborators, your teammates, your biz buddies, you. Where are they delighted? Where did they find crazy joy, value? Where are they complimenting the heck out of you? For me, I get compliments because I said it's not just clients, right? So it's every stakeholder. I get collaborators, podcast guests, mastermind guests that compliment me on my workflow for that. Which means that I can use that to my advantage to get more opportunities, right? Where are they confused? Where did they have to ask you questions? Where were they confused? What feedback keeps repeating? The good, bad, and the ugly, right? Are you asking for feedback? If you're not getting any feedback, you should be asking for it. And then think through like how you're leading your business a bit. So where did you stray from your plan? Or where did you get distracted? Where did you come over here and spend time because it felt productive and necessary, like it would help you, versus staying the course of where you said you would actually spend your time, energy, and money. And some of what I already told you today. You want to do this reflection and go back and look at all of this and think through what's green, red, what needs my attention in the good and the bad and the ugly, right? What will I keep? What will I tweak? And when we look at that, what are we going to keep? That's what I want you to do. When you ask these questions and you sit down and you answer this and you review your numbers and you review your progress to your goals. I want you to go back through. And you can, if this is a Google document, you can highlight it with different colors. If you wrote this, you can write, keep, start, stop, continue, whatever. But I want you to answer these questions when you go back through it. And when I do this in the quarterly business review, as I told you, I have people highlight green, red, and stuff like that. You want to keep. What produced results, right? What produced results that you wanted or exceeded those results, not what you liked or what didn't. So what is that green? You want to keep that stuff around or even repeat it. You want to stop anything that is draining, that is not giving you ROI, that is draining your energy with little to no return, right? So this could be offers, this could be teammates, this could be marketing channels, this could be networking events. This could be software. This could be habits. What do you need to stop based on the questions that you ask yourself? And then also start, what do I need to add? Right. When you pull this up and you plan annually, and then each quarter you're executing a part of that plan and you're pausing with these reflections to see how it went. You can tweak in real time. You can look at that plan to make sure it's still where you're trying to go. You can look at what's happening and what's not, what's working, what isn't. And then you have time to test and play a little bit. Don't just see it as this bad thing or this extra thing to do. This is your area, this is your padding room to play a little bit. What do you want to start doing? Is this tracking leads? Are you not tracking your leads yet? I suggest you track your leads and then you have that data, right? Then you know your primary lead source. And then the fun part is you have year over year data after you do this a year. So you'll know in July of 2025 and July of 2026 if things look the same and you can start to plan your business rhythms around that. Do you need to add weekly CEO time to talk to those leads, to update that lead tracker, focus on the business activities that matter? Do you need to document your processes because you're doing a little bit different every time? Or you know in the next six months or so you need to hire. And if you hire, these people need to know step by step what they're doing. So is documenting processes something that you need to start doing, or you need to follow up more. Where are things getting lost whenever you're working on converting or taking care of your clients? Do you need to start the quarterly planning we talked about? And then I want you to think through simplifying because we tend to do more and more and more. And at this point in the game, you might have stacked and stacked and stacked and stacked some more. Maybe it's time to simplify and not think about what you can do more, but what you can actually take away. Can you remove some of your offers or should you? Or not focus on them for a while and choose a flagship offer that you're going to work on selling. Maybe it's less content, maybe it's less systems. Sometimes growth looks like Taking away versus adding. Think the takeaway I really want you to have from this episode is that reflection isn't something you've earned after the work is done. That's where you start and where you end as a CEO. The businesses that feel intentional at the end of the year, that felt like they were focused, that felt like their growth was what they wanted it to be, or close, we set goals, not always reaching those goals, but at least we got closer because we had them. And the businesses that felt intentional at the end of the year rarely got there by accident. They get there because someone was willing to stop, to look honestly at the business. And make better decisions before another six months slips by. I know people, business owners, that are admirable, that are doing their jam, that are excellent at what they do, that are working to create balance between their business and their life. But I met them in early 2025 and it's mid 2026, and they still have not acted on some of the things that they were talking to me about in early twenty twenty five. That's a year and a half. That's not okay. That is costing you time, energy, and money. When it feels like we can't slow down because there's so much to do in so little time, we just execute, execute, barely get by, avoid these decisions, talk about them, kick the can, and another year rolls around. That is costing you way more. than anything else in your business. Okay, that's where I'm leaving you today. If you have questions, please, you know where to find me on Instagram at virtually underscore Steph Rubio. Pop in, let's chat, tell me if you have done this reflection or if you're going to do this reflection and how I may be able to support you. Until next time, this was another episode of your favorite podcast on growing a real as fuck business. That supports your real as fuck one true life. Rooted in relentless by your girl Steph Rubio. Stay in touch. Holla if you hear me. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Rooted and Relentless. If it made you think deeper, maybe scribble a little something down or lovingly call yourself out, hit me with the SSR. Subscribe, share, and review. As in, leave a review. I'll be eternally grateful. Then come find me on Instagram at virtually underscore Steph Rubio and tell me what landed, what you're doing differently, or maybe what you vehemently disagree with. I like those conversations too. Until next time, keep building, keep leading, and keep doing it on your own fucking terms. Bye.