I’m Only 42% to Last Year’s Revenue

This issue will look a little… simpler than usual. And there’s very definitely a reason for that. I’ll write up a full article on that reason, but today’s issue is a little test in some ways. I’ll explain later. 😎

In the meantime, we’re about 6 months into the year. So, we’re going to do a little “gut check” on our businesses. This year has a little more “behind the scenes” in it than usual.

And here we go…

FEATURE ARTICLE

The Mid-Year Gut Check

We’re at the halfway mark. Six months into 2026, six months to go.

It’s a good arbitrary moment to look around at your business and see where things actually stand. If things aren’t moving the way you wanted, you’ve still got six months to fix that.

Not some official “Q2 Review.” Just… a few honest gut-check questions.

I’ll go first on each. Then they’re yours.

1. Where did the money actually come from… and where did your time go?

These two lists are rarely the same, and that gap is the most useful thing you’ll look at all year. (It’s the whole reason I keep harping on the seven functions every business has.)

For me, by far my biggest revenue generator is Concierge… and that’s also where most of my time goes. But client production is only one of those 7 functions. So I’ve been auditing all 7 and fixing the systems on each as I go.

2. What’s quietly working better than you expected… and are you leaning into it?

Most of us run these gut-checks hunting for what’s broken. Don’t forget to clock what’s working… and then consciously do more of it.

For me, that’s AI. I started the year with a goal to “get better at AI,” on the instinct that not doing so would become a problem. I’ve made real progress… Claude Code now feels almost like having an employee. Better, in some ways.

3. What’s the one bottleneck capping things right now?

Not the ten things on your list. The one. There’s almost always a single constraint doing most of the holding-back, and we stay busy optimizing everything except that. (More on finding it here.)

For me, it’s been organization. I’m not a disorganized guy… but going solo, we create our own disorder — by not treating the business as its own organization with real systems and pathways, and instead flying by the seat of our pants, doing whatever that next email demands. My business audit (across all content and my 7-function board) has been some of my most valuable work this year. Still in progress.

4. What are you still doing purely out of momentum?

The thing that made sense 18 months ago… that just kept running because nobody turned it off. (My courses were exactly this.) Habits are chains. Stuff we do on automatic, having forgotten the “why.”

Here’s one I actually fixed… and it’s not even work-related.

My health habits weren’t great. I was still eating like I was in my 20s, barely working out, and kept kicking the can because I didn’t want to confront it. Pure momentum. I changed it. And yeah, AI had something to do with it 🤷‍♂️… I set up an AI health coach on my own guidelines. Every day I log my weight and what I eat, Claude tracks it, gives feedback, even pushes back on me. That accountability partner, sitting right on my iPhone, has genuinely kept me in the game. Down almost 10 pounds.

5. You set targets back in January. Are you on pace to hit them?

This is the whole point of stopping at the halfway line. Not “did I stay busy”… but a real status check. Where did you say you’d be by December? Where are you now? And be honest… if you keep doing exactly what you’re doing, does that get you there — or are you quietly hoping Q4 saves you?

And… did you even set targets? Many don’t. Then the whole year is just momentum. Doing things with intention is the difference. (That’s function 7, by the way. 😉)

For me: my AI target, I’m hitting. But that’s operational. Look at the actual revenue and I’m about 42% of the way to my 2025 number… at the halfway point. So as things stand, 2026 is on pace to come in under 2025. Which means I’ve got six months to put more pedal to the metal and correct that. The numbers don’t suck… but a year-over-year increase would be nice, right? 😎

Anyway… go do your own mid-year gut check. See where things stand. Put on your Executive function. And get intentional about how the second half of your year goes.

WANNA WALK THROUGH A MID-YEAR CHECK – AND MAP OUT THE 7 DIVISIONS OF YOUR OWN BUSINESS? You can book a strategy call with me anytime and we’ll do it together. I have a feeling that’d be one productive hour. 😎

WordPress News & Updates

CERN moved to WordPress. The folks who literally invented the web migrated home.cern off Drupal and onto WordPress… after a six-month bake-off against five platforms, and they’re now running ~580 sites on it. Next time someone says WordPress is “just for blogging,” point them at the people running the Large Hadron Collider. → The Repository broke down the migration

WordPress is adding a 24-hour “cooldown” on plugin updates. Under a new initiative cheerfully named “Protect the Shire,” plugin and theme releases now wait up to 24 hours for AI-assisted security screening before auto-updates roll out — a move to catch supply-chain attacks before they spread. Manual updates still go instantly, so for most of us on autopilot it’s a quiet win you’ll never even notice. → announced on the WordPress.org blog

FluentCart now does EU VAT and tax for free, built right in. The 1.4.0 release rebuilt tax from the ground up… per-item breakdowns, full EU reverse charge, worldwide rates preloaded, all in core. If you sell digital products globally, that’s a weekend-eating headache handled for you. → the 1.4.0 announcement

WooCommerce is killing its block-based product editor. The beta product editor gets pulled in WooCommerce 11.0 (late July), leaving the classic editor as the only option. No migration needed… but if you ever switched the beta on, flip it back before then. → the WooCommerce dev blog

The WP Engine vs. Automattic saga grinds on. A judge found Matt Mullenweg “evasive” in his 21-hour (!) deposition and gave WP Engine more time, while fact discovery has slipped three times and there’s no jury until late 2027. The community is openly begging both sides to settle… and frankly, at this point it’s about lawyers’ billable hours, not principle. → the latest rulings

WordCamp Europe was packed… and a little gloomy. Kraków drew 2,458 (up 43%), but the hallway talk was slipping market share and one veteran dev’s candid “nobody has a good workflow for managing their WordPress site with AI yet. No one.” Honestly refreshing… a room full of pros admitting we’re all still figuring this out. Which is exactly why I keep telling you not to feel behind. → the WCEU recap

TECH FOCUS

How I’m Actually Running My Business Audit (With AI As My Copilot)

Like I mentioned, outside of client work for Concierge, most of my “other” time right now is going into a full audit of my entire business.

I’m using those exact 7 divisions as my framework, going one by one. Some parts are ongoing… my content audit is a function 6 activity that takes a while, so I chip at it weekly.

But let’s talk application, because “business audit” is a big, vague thing.

I’m using AI (Claude, in my case) as my copilot. It doesn’t make any decisions… that’s all me. But it speeds up the mechanics and spots patterns I’d have missed.

#1 – Look at your real numbers and real website

I run Independent Analytics for stats and FluentCRM for this email list. So all those metrics sit right in my site’s database, not scattered across the internet. Great for digital sovereignty 😎… and great for giving Claude direct access to my numbers.

I’ve set Claude up with SSH access to my site, so it can query the database tables directly. And since AI is a serious pattern-recognition engine, it finds holes.

Last week I tackled a big problem with my opt-in rate. I knew it was bad, but Claude ran the numbers and it was worse than I thought… opt-ins versus traffic was truly ugly. Thing is, Claude could also see which posts pull the most traffic, and scan each one for whether it even had a call to action. So I moved those top posts to the front of my content-audit queue (highest-leverage stuff first) and made a bunch of tweaks to the opt-in process. A few days in, it looks like I might have TRIPLED MY OPT-IN RATE.

#2 – Capture your systems into a Vault

One of the biggest constraints on solopreneurs is that the whole “system” (if you can call it that) lives inside your head. Subject to your memory and your whims. We’re not good at that.

So I’ve been capturing my systems into what I call “the Vault.” I use Obsidian for it… basically a pile of markdown files in a folder. But Obsidian isn’t the point. The point is getting it OUT OF YOUR HEAD.

Case in point: late last week a new client signed up for Concierge Platinum. Instead of just running my usual onboarding from memory, I documented the whole thing as I went, hunting for constraints and ways to streamline. I dictated to Claude what I do and why… a brain dump… and Claude wrote the SOP and dropped it into the Vault. I even built a repeatable Claude skill so parts of onboarding can be handled by it, while the rest stays me. Now it’s a real system that exists outside my head, and better service for everyone who joins Concierge from here on.

I’m doing the same across the business. How my FluentCRM automations work… into the Vault. Email sequences… into the Vault. Tags and what they do… into the Vault. Other SOPs, filed under the division they belong to. Last week I documented how I run Roadmap calls (and plugged some holes), how I build lead magnets, and more.

Sounds boring to “document” your business. It’s actually kind of fun… because with AI as your copilot, you’re not writing dry docs nobody reads. You’re just dictating, and it does the heavy lifting.

And here’s the payoff: a Vault that AI can actually access becomes a library of SOPs AI can actually follow… on its own in some cases, with you in others. Capturing how your site works gives AI the context to better enable YOU, instead of you leaning on your own memory.

Over time it brings order, sheds overwhelm, and genuinely improves your business. Because the more you do it, the more you treat your business as a true SYSTEM instead of just this thing you do. That’s leverage.