In this solo episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast, host Angela Mondor (the Geeky Girl) uses the back‑to‑school season as a metaphor to help small‑business owners reset, re‑energize, and strategically plan for the fall. She explains how the natural transition from summer to autumn (or winter to spring in the Southern Hemisphere) offers a psychological boost that can be harnessed for business growth. Angela walks listeners through a layered planning system—yearly vision, quarterly checkpoints, and monthly action items—emphasizing the importance of fresh planners (especially the Rockstar Success Circle planner released each October) and the power of 90‑day experimentation cycles to test, learn, and iterate. She frames strategic planning as a fun, neuro‑divergent‑friendly activity rather than a rigid corporate exercise, encouraging listeners to align their business goals with the excitement of fall (pumpkin spice, sweaters, Halloween). Throughout, she shares personal anecdotes (her husband’s teaching schedule, a student exchange story) to illustrate seasonal shifts, and she invites listeners to engage with community resources such as the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group and the show‑notes site. The episode concludes with a call to action to apply the seasonal energy, set new goals, and join the supportive community.
Chapters
Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we're going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor and I'm also known as the Geeky Girl. I want to talk to you about something a bit fun today, give you a little bit of a twist on a few things. I do like to spin things a bit. So it's almost time for back to school. Some kids are starting to head back to school now, being that we're sort of mid-August. Up in Canada, they're not going back yet, but I know that some people are starting to head there, and maybe you're even just thinking about it. There's some fall things coming around in your circle, so let's talk about how our business relates to back to school and how we can use this And inspire ourselves with this. So at the end of the day here, I loved back to school. I didn't love school, but I loved back to school because I got new books and new binders and all these new school supplies at the time. Now they're office supplies. You get what I'm going with here. So the new beginnings are exciting. And there's some ideas of reflecting on how that felt when we started a new school year. So if you were the same, if you loved all those brand new books, you got to start writing in a book that you haven't written before, that wasn't a mess, all that kind of stuff. This is the episode for you. We're going to talk about this. And, you know, some of you may have littles that are going back to school. Others of you, maybe your kids are no longer in school. But my husband's a teacher, and guess what? He's heading back to school pretty soon here. So for me, this is a transition period as well. But I do find that we do tend to have similar transition periods, even if you're not specifically watching children go to school or going to school yourself or any of those kinds of things, that there is a transition anyway during this time. We're moving from summer to fall if you're in North America, and of course if you're in South America, you're moving from winter to spring, right? So I always got to have these things backwards in my head. So when we're talking about this concept of back to school and your business. And you can actually use this to inspire yourself, inspire your business, energize yourself as you move into this fall period, thinking about your goals in your business. Where have you come from? What are the things you've accomplished this year? And what are the things you have left to accomplish? Or where do you want to go next through this period of the year? Now, there's— this is a hefty piece of the year. There's a lot of business that gets done yet. So Hold your horses if you didn't reach your goals yet. There's still lots of time ahead. There is a lot of excitement and new beginnings when it comes to back to school, and you can really hone in on that energy and bring it to your business as well. The routine and the structure is also really important in the summertime, especially if you're in North America at this particular time. The time outside has been different, especially if you're in the northern side like I am. We try to— in Canada, we try to spend as much time as possible outside during the summertime to get all those sun's rays that we would love to have and the warmth that we get from the summertime. And then as fall starts to turn, there's a big change in season. So if you're living in places where there isn't a huge shift in season, you still have it. I know you do because I've talked to a few of you. And I remember there was— my daughter went on an exchange program to Argentina. So There was an Argentinian student that stayed with us for 10 days and she went to stay with them for 10 days. It was a whole school trip thing. It was pretty awesome. And I remember she brought her bathing suit with her and it was wintertime there. And she was so surprised because they had a pool at their house and she's like, why aren't we swimming? And they're like, oh, it's wintertime. She's like, but it's still 25 degrees Celsius, which is like 80-something degrees or whatever the case may be, Fahrenheit. And she was just like, what are you talking about? She didn't see the difference in transition, but you will in your area, you'll feel it. And this is important. Our routines and our structures start to come together again as we move through this next phase. Summer is more of a relaxed period of time. So in your business, using the same energy, you can draw some energy from that and start to think about how you can start fresh inside your business. So if you're part of the Rockstar Success Circle, we get a brand new planner in October. And of course, it's really nice to start with a brand new fresh planner that we haven't touched. It's nice and fresh and new and shiny. So those kinds of things can help you when you're thinking about how do you move forward in your business? How can you take these things and move forward? If you're not part of the Success Circle, that's totally okay. You can look at this time and say, what is it that I want to accomplish? If you haven't created your yearly plan, your vision for where you're heading this year, if you haven't done your quarterly or monthly planning, you can still do it now. And say, what do I want to do from September on? I've got, you know, four months. What am I going to accomplish? What am I going to do? And you know, build that out and create that vision for yourself. Use this time as best as possible to energize yourself and create this amazing plan for yourself. Now, I like I said, love to plan yearly. I typically like to plan somewhere in October or November when I'm starting to put things together for the year. There's some of that stuff that happens. In August as well. Of course, the planners need to be created, and we typically do a lot of work on the planners in August. So there is some stuff that happens really early, but for the majority of things that we plan from the business perspective, it's done in October, November. And then of course, every quarter we do a plan, every month we do a plan. Creating these plans allows us to roll up and make sure that we're not focused on that great big goal. I don't have to always constantly be worrying about that huge goal. Instead, I can think, what do I have to do this month? What are the things I have to accomplish this month? And so we're checking to make sure that They always roll up to the top means that I'm on track to be able to be the success that I want to see in the business. So we get to assess those goals on a regular basis. And of course, we learn from our mistakes. We think something's going to work. So better done than perfect. Give it a try. Try it for 90 days. That's what the quarters are for. And when you find out, oh, this works or that works, that's great. Well, I need to tweak this because that one didn't quite work the way I anticipated. It gives you a chance to learn from your mistakes. So you can set new goals now. Use this new energy in your business. Set some new goals. If you've already set yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals, you want to look back and say, what is it that I am working towards? Does that still make sense? Am I still moving in the right direction towards those things, or does my trajectory need to change a little bit? This is strategic planning. I know a lot of people think that it's scary when I say the word strategic planning. I think it's fun. I love to be able to, you know, change things up, move things around, assess where I'm headed. How can I make that success happen in a little bit of a different way? We get to think outside the box. It's really good for the neurodivergent brain, to be honest. And so if you don't look at it from that corporate strategic planning and instead have some fun with it, you can incorporate the things that you're learning along the way and you can make choices in your business that allow you to actually build out the kind of life you actually want to have. So there is some fantastic inspiration you could take from transitions, like moving from spring to fall or moving from winter to spring. There's a lot of different things that happen in our worlds that allow us to be able to pull from these transition periods. Think about what it is that you love most about the transition from summer to fall. Some people like the transition because, you know, there's a lot more pumpkin spice out there, or maybe you like it because you like to wear sweaters and the summertime's so hot and you don't get to wear That those clothes, maybe you've got clothes in your closet and you're like, I can't wait till I can wear those again, but it's too hot to wear them now. Look at those transition times and what is it that you're looking for, that you are looking forward to in those times so that you can use some of that energy to rejuvenate stuff that's going on in your business. If you're feeling a little stale and burnt out, maybe look for that renewed focus in that transition and think about this from a success mindset. Where am I going and what do I want to accomplish and how do I want to do that? kind of life do I want to have while I'm making that happen? So all this to say, the energy around fall and back to school and pumpkins, and of course Halloween's my favorite, it's coming. All of these things, there's some great energy that you can grab onto and use in order to propel yourself into this next version of success that you're going to see in this final piece of the year. I hope that you're able to take my information and soak it up a little bit and maybe think about some things that you didn't think about before and take some time to say, how can I use this amazing energy that's coming to rejuvenate myself and my business as you move forward into fall and some of the busiest times in most of our businesses? I hope you have a fantastic week and I look forward to talking to you next week. Bye now. Thank you so much for listening to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. Your support means the world to me. You can find show notes for this episode and other goodies at overgiversanonymous.ca. And if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy the podcast in general, why not join us in the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group where you can connect with overgivers from all over the world? Head on over to geekygirl.ca/group.
