Welcome to Your 2026 Halftime Show

You're listening to Build a Business You Love, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping expert entrepreneurs just like you, coaches, consultants, and advisors, build a business that not only earns you a great income, but a business that you can enjoy building along the way. A business that is aligned with who you are and how you want to show up in this world and serve the people who you're meant to help. There are a lot of gurus out there telling you that you need the latest and greatest. But what if business could be simple? Each week I'll bring you an episode with ideas that you can try on.

And if you like them, you can implement them at no cost. Because I believe that when you build a business that is aligned to your values and your vision, you become unstoppable. Now let's get started with today's episode. Welcome to the podcast. If you are new here, thanks for joining.

And if you've been around for a little while, thanks for coming back. It has been a hot minute since I recorded a podcast episode, and I'm not gonna lie, it feels pretty good to be back in the podcasting driver's seat. Now, in January of this year, I made a commitment to record 52 episodes of this podcast, one a week. And well, here we are June 1st when I'm recording this episode, and I've fallen off pretty hard. I think I recorded two episodes and released them in January, and since then it has been radio silence.

However, the interesting thing is that people continue to listen. Every week there's a consistent amount of people listening to old episodes. So it tells me that there is a demand for content through podcasts, but the reason why I paused was the format in which I'm delivering the content wasn't feeling authentic and aligned to me. You see, the old podcast, it was called Growth Conversations with Ashley Frank. Great name, nothing wrong with it, but it really didn't have a focus.

It didn't speak to the audience who I wanted to serve. And my audience, my audience are people like you. It's people who are building businesses and people who have great ideas and expertise, but maybe they're struggling in that consistency of building a business and most importantly, how to actually grow sales. Because if we're not growing sales in a business, we're just a volunteer and we didn't start this business to just volunteer. So I've shifted the podcast.

It is now called Build a Business You Love. And I think that's much more aligned. It gives me a lot more energy to show up here and it gives me a focus of things to talk about with you every week. My goal here is to help you grow a business that is not just profitable, but a business that you love. And do that in a way that feels aligned to you.

Because if it doesn't feel aligned, is it really worth building the business after all? So there will be more episodes around how to build a business you love, what it means to build a business that you love, and really getting to the heart of why you're building the business that connects to the revenue that you're earning, but also brings your humanness to the business as well. So over the last six months, I have been doing a lot of reflection. I've thought about the podcast. I've also thought about the business.

Up until now, I've kind of positioned myself as a sales trainer, which is okay. I enjoy sales and I enjoy teaching sales and I'm pretty darn good at it. But it's not necessarily what I want to hang my hat on. It's not my legacy of what I want to leave in the world. What I really love is helping people step up and be themselves, whether that be in sales or leadership and in everyday life.

And I feel that now is the time to really bring that forward because we are in a world of AI and a world that is more remote than ever. And we have all of this technology that's supposedly connecting us, but when I talk to people, we're more disconnected than ever. And that's starting to show up in how people are building businesses because a lot of people are showing up in ways that they're being told to show up. The gurus and all of the fast-talking people out there are saying you have to do this to get to your first hundred thousand, or you're not successful unless you're hitting a seven-figure business. But I kind of call BS on that because I believe your true competitive advantage is showing up with more of your humanity and humanness.

And being human is the competitive advantage that's going to help you grow a business that you love, that attracts the people who you love working with and ultimately earns you a really good income. So those are some of the shifts that are happening. The business is shifting a little bit as well, but I'm still here to provide value to you, to help you navigate growing a business, how to show up as a leader in your business, and how to ultimately generate revenue, but a revenue target that's aligned to you, not just some arbitrary number that somebody's saying that you have to reach. Because there's more than one way to measure success, and there's more what more than one way to get there as well. Over the past six months, I've been up to a few other things as well.

So I decided that I was going to work toward a coaching accreditation. Now, there's all kinds of people out there calling themselves coaches. I always call myself a coach as well. However, I've been very humbled through the process of becoming a certified coach with ICF, which is International Coaching Federation. I'm working toward my ACC, which is an associate certified coach.

And the reason why I started it was I was curious if there were better ways that I would could provide value to the people that I serve. And more particularly, some of the corporate clients that I'm working with were starting to ask about accreditations. So I signed up for a course, started taking it just before Christmas in 2025. And for the last six months, it has consumed my Tuesday and Thursday evening, and it just wrapped up last week. Now I mentioned that I was humbled.

I'm humbled because I realized a lot of the work that I'm doing is not necessarily pure coaching. You see, coaching is a thinking partnership, it helps people bring the best out in themselves. It's not about giving advice. And a lot of what I've done and what I continue to do today is advice giving and consulting. But learning the strategies and the framework around professional coaching and how coaching really happens has been so powerful.

It has changed how I show up as a leader and it showed up how I work, it's really changed how I work with clients as well. And I'm excited in future episodes to bring you more of that. But that's been one of the things that I've been up to. I also passed a major transport Canada exam working towards my pilot stuff. And I've been doing a fair amount of client work as well.

And some of that's involved travel. So I really have just been resetting, re-engaging with what I love about my business so that I can help you build a business that you love in return. So, all of that to be said, I'm back, and I am now committed and re-energized to an episode a week from this date moving forward. This podcast is going to release on June 2nd, and you're going to see me every Tuesday moving forward. Love for you to continue to tune in and bring your friends along as well.

This episode, the timing is actually perfect, and it wasn't intentional. It just happened when I started planning the episode. I was like, huh, the timing on this works out really well. You see, we are at the halftime show for 2026. We're coming into June 1st when this is being recorded, June 2nd when it's released, and that is the halfway month of the year.

June is your halftime show. How has your year gone? What are you celebrating? What are you a little bit ashamed of? What are you disappointed in?

It's the time for us to reflect, get clear on what has worked, and reset so that we have a really strong second half to the year. You see, as of July 1st, you're going to have be at 182 days already gone for the year, and you're going to have 183 days left for the year. And you can make a lot of progress in 183 days, even if your first 182 days haven't gone the way you thought they would go. I mean, I'm here speaking from experience. My first 10282 days didn't necessarily go how I thought they were going to go.

I still made progress. I still have things to celebrate, but I have a lot of things that I want to work on and continue to improve and move forward. So I thought it would make this episode to get you thinking about what does your halftime show for 2026 look like? And walk you through a really simple process for getting curious with that. Because part of growth is about getting curious.

And part of getting curious is reflecting. We are so busy building our businesses and serving clients and doing all of the things that we have to do, as well as living our lives, that sometimes we don't take the time required to reflect on what's working, what's not working, and how far we've actually come. And part of your planning for your halftime show of 2026 is reflection. It's actually a big part of it. And this is not necessarily an exercise that you're going to do all at once.

It's not an exercise that you're probably going to complete during this podcast episode today. It's something that may take you a couple of sessions, a couple of intentional sessions, sitting down with a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and really thinking through what's working, what's not working, and are you still moving in a direction that you want to move for your business throughout the remainder of this year and beyond? And to get you started with that reflection, I've come up with a couple of questions, just a few questions to get you thinking, because powerful questions lead to powerful insight, and powerful insight leads you to a powerful destination if you really take this seriously. So, just getting started with reflection, here's a few things to take some time and ponder. Now you can pause, you can write these down.

I'm also going to put these questions in the show notes just in case you're occupied and you're busy. If you're driving, please don't try to write these down. And sit with these questions and get curious with them and really think them through. And the first answer that comes to your head is great, but take time and I bet you more answers will come as well, or maybe even more questions will develop. So step one is just asking yourselves these kinds of questions.

And they're not questions that have a quick yes or no, or they're also not questions that kind of seek blame. They instead seek to expand your awareness of what's happening and where you're going. So the first question is how have you showed up over the past six months? How have you shown up in your business in the past six months? Are you showing up as the person who would accomplish the goals that you set out?

Or are you showing up in a way that is not aligned with those goals? Because it's so easy for us to set the goals the first of January and then continue along our merry-old way of doing things and not showing up the way that we need to show up to achieve those goals. And the bigger the goals that we set, the more differently we often have to show up, right? We have to show up as a different standard. We have to show up with different levels of focus.

We have to show up maybe with more authenticity. Maybe we need to show up as a leader if we have a team. And if you're not showing up in those ways, you're not going to reach your goals. So, how have you showed up over the past six months? And is how you're showing up aligned with the ability to achieve your goals?

That's question number one. Question number two are your goals still relevant? Is what you're working toward still relevant, or are you on autopilot? It happens. And do you really want what you're working toward, or is it outdated?

You're allowed to shift focus. Take me as an example. I started shifting focus in January. I'm allowed to do that. Yeah, it's taking me a little bit of time, but I now feel more aligned and re-energized.

Now, will it change in the future? Maybe. Do I anticipate that's going to change throughout the rest of 2026? Absolutely not. I feel very committed to this and this is what we're moving forward with.

But goals and the things that we're working toward, they're allowed to evolve. And if you're working toward a goal that is outdated or no longer aligned, you need to ask yourself the question of what is more exciting? What do I want to work toward? Is there a change that I need to make here? Because if the goal is being worked on just because you wrote it down on January 1st, you're missing the whole point of this.

Because what you're working on, especially in growing your business, needs to be something that lights you up and has you excited. Because if you're not excited, you're not going to be able to build a business that you love or earn the income that you want or impact the people that you want to impact. It's also important to ask yourself Am I working towards something that is truly mine? Or am I working toward that's something towards something that's borrowed from somebody else? We sometimes kind of take on expectations of other people, and that clouds the desires that we want and the things that we're working toward.

So ask yourself what you're working on right now, what you're working toward for the remainder of 2026 and beyond, is that something that is truly aligned to who you are? Or are you borrowing expectations from somebody else? And if you are borrowing those expectations, you should probably get curious with are those expectations something that you want to take on, or is there something you need to let go of or change in that process? And the last question that you can ask around awareness that I'm going to give you, although there's many, many more, is if you're at the end of 2026, how will you feel about your current direction? So if you continue on this path that you're on right now and you've reached December 31st of 2026, how do you feel?

Do you feel like you've accomplished something worthwhile? Do you feel like you kind of just, you know, were on autopilot and reached the goal and now you get to rinse and repeat coming into 2027? Or are you excited because you changed direction at the halftime show and you had the opportunity to work on something that was truly meaningful to you? Now, I gave you some questions for reflection. I encourage you to take time with this first part and just get quiet and start reflecting.

Write things down. Really think about the questions, go deeper, ask yourself other questions. And the goal here is not to shame yourself or put yourself into disappointment that you didn't accomplish things. It's to get clear on what's working, what's not working, and are you still even excited? Because so often we set a goal and we just start working toward it and we never revisit it because we set a goal that just felt good in the moment.

But maybe as we got going, we realized that hey, that's not really something I want to work toward. So I encourage you to take a bit of time, reflect. Maybe it happens over a couple of hours, a couple of days, or maybe it happens over the next couple of weeks. Once you have reflected, though, it's time to acknowledge where you're at and identify where you want to go. And what I mean by acknowledging where you're at is if you've had wins, celebrate the wins.

I'm celebrating the wins that I've had. Even though I've fallen off in a lot of different areas, I'm still celebrating the wins that I had. I successfully completed a pretty intense coaching course. I passed a test. I got to do some really awesome client work and had a huge impact and got to travel.

Those are wins. And I've identified where I'm off track. I'm off track with the podcasts. I'm off track with some of the other things that I wanted to build in my business and some of the programs that I wanted to release. But now I've acknowledged it and I've identified where I drift it.

I've identified where I want to go and how I want to go forward. And now I have a plan. I've taken time to make a plan. Now, my plan is looking toward the end of 2026, but the plan itself, the actual tangible things that I'm working on are over the next 90 days. Because I believe that you can make a lot of progress over 90 days.

But if you set that timeline for too long, like 180 days, you can start to, you know, oh, 180 days is a long time out. I'll get there. And then before you know it, we're at that 180 days and you've accomplished nothing. So think about where you want to go to get to the end of 2026, but also bring that back into a timeline that you can work on. 90 days is a great container for working on things, moving things forward, and actually accomplishing things inside of our business that makes a difference, that makes a measurable impact.

Now you're thinking, well, but we're at June. We're at June. Now it's summertime, right? Summertime is not the excuse to stop the momentum in your business. So many people think that the summertime is the time to slow down or take your foot off the gas.

When in actual fact, the summertime, the June, July, and August, they are the separation season. And you can key yourself up for so much momentum coming into September, October, November, and December by working on things in June, July, and August, which are typically considered the slower months. But guess what? People are still working. People are still moving businesses forward.

Yeah, they might not be as quick to respond back to you. Yes, people are on vacation. But there's still things that you can do during those months that's going to set you up for a strong second half and a really strong finish to the end of the year. And part of that is going through this reflection process, reflecting, acknowledging where you are, identifying the drift, and then setting a plan for correction. So over the next 90 days, what are you working on?

What are you going to do in the separation season? Are you going to refine your products? Are you going to set up a campaign to generate some leads? Are you going to start booking review meetings with clients for this fall? What does that look like?

And when you're thinking about your priorities, you don't just want to be doing things that are keeping you busy. Think about those 5% activities that are actually moving the business forward. And by moving the business forward, they're the things that are bringing clients and revenue through the door. So how are you going to work on prospecting? How are you going to work on lead generation?

How are you going to work on moving those clients that commit as leads through your journey to get them to become like customers? All of those kinds of things. Maybe it's time to go out and ask for referrals from your happy clients. Maybe it's time to release a case study of a happy client or a project that you had. There's all kinds of things that you can do to build that momentum.

Maybe you're working on events that are going to happen in early fall. Now's the time. Now is a separation season to get all of that moving forward. It is not the time to take your foot off the gas, coast through the summer months, and then hit the panic button when September and October arrive. Right now you're not behind.

Even though you may have drifted, or maybe you forgot about those goals that you wrote down and you had to dust off the digital, the digital note or the post-it note that you wrote those goals on in January, you're not behind because now you're going to get intentional, you're going to reflect, you're going to ask yourself those questions, and you're going to get back on track. So today's episode was just sharing a bit about my drift and how I kind of fell off, but I'm back and I'm excited and I'm energized. And I hope that you can feel that energy in my voice through the podcast today. And I really appreciate those people who continue to listen. And there's going to be a lot more great stuff coming for you.

Tips on how to grow a business you love, not just working toward that dollar figure, but things that are going to excite you and how you're going to show up in your business with more of you that's ultimately going to attract the audience you want and that income that you desire. So there's more stuff coming. I appreciate you so much. If you would share this episode with somebody else who would receive some value, let them know what I'm up to. And also follow me on Instagram at theashleyfrank.com.

I will see you back here same time next week. And I look forward to helping you build a business that you love while earning an income that you deserve.