The untraditional way to evaluate your performance & goals - Ep. #34

Evaluating your performance should have ASSETS as a starting point if you want to build long-term profitability and stability.

At all times, you must focus not only on day-to-day tasks in your business but on developing assets that move the needle in your business and provide a stronger and stronger foundation for growth. 

The 5C framework can help you evaluate the most important assets in your business:

1. Customers

2. Conversations

3. Content

4. Cash

5. Clout

When evaluating our performance and goals, you should for each category go through these 4 steps:

1. What you did

2. How it went

3. What you learned

4. What to do next

Customers 

If you have been with me for a while, you will know that I value responsiveness and lead quality much higher than audience volume. In fact, most of my revenue is directly related to a previous customer pulling in more customers to my business. This is also why this category is not called audience - it's not just that it doesn't start with a C. I want you to constantly be reminded that customers that have gotten great results are far more important than a big number of spectators who are not loyal to you and are not telling anyone about you.

Ask yourself: What did you do.....

1. to get customers better results, faster results, or to get results with less hassle?

2. to show appreciation to customers?

3. to overdeliver and surprise them?

4. to understand their needs even better?

5. to make it easy for them to have something to tell their friend about you?

6. to make it easier to become a customer?

7. to make it more fun to be part of your community?

8. you continue the list...

 Then ask yourself:

• How it went
• What you learned 
• What to do next

You should also record:

1. How many active customers do you have?

2. What is a typical lifetime for a customer?

3. How can you inspire them to invest even more with you?

4. What have been the obstacles for them to do so?

Then set or confirm your ONE big goal to move things forward in the next 12 months and ONE in the next 3 months, ONE in the next month.

No, I don't mean break your 12-month goal down into 12 smaller goals.

You will learn, priorities may change, heck you might even reach that goal the first month. Strategic planning is about the direction and knowing what to do next to get closer.

So ONE goal for the next year, quarter, month, and the week is fine. 

Conversations

Learning happens in conversations, may it be with a real person, a video, or a book.

All of these spark your internal dialogue and provide the opportunity for conversation.

What did you do to get into conversations that provided insights, inspiration, and connection?

I am talking about different types of conversations so let me give you some examples:

1. Conversations with customers with the single purpose of knowing how to improve the experience of being a customer or learning how to be of even more help to them.

2. Conversations with peers to build partnerships and bake a bigger cake together! Even if you are on paper competitors that doesn't really mean that all in the audience would relate equally to both of you. You can both win through collaboration. To give an example near to home, some of the guests on this podcast offer services quite similar to mine. Yet they are contributing to my business by sharing their appearance on this podcast with their audience.

3. Conversations with subcontractors or employees. How well have you been taking care of them and have you really listened to their ideas and suggestions?

4. How well are your marketing systems working to attract more people, how well do they perform in terms of inviting people to a conversation and eventually convert them into customers? 

Content

Which content is performing really well and which should be updated or retired?
Have you productively produced the amount of content you set out to do?
Is the content converting at the level you hoped for?

Look at both marketing content and course content. Which do the students find the most helpful and which is skipped or could be left out to reduce overwhelm? 

Please note that I am not giving any frequency here. This is not about developing your strategy but evaluating if you are on the right track with what you decided to do. Where are you weakest and where are you strongest?

Which single piece of content do you REALLY want to give a facelift or strengthen to become more dominant in that area? 

Again:

1. What did you do

2. How did it go

3. What you learned

4. What to do next

Keep it simple but specific! 

Cash

Yeah, well financial goals don't start with a C 🤪

You can measure your revenue here - and you should.

But more interesting is your ability to make money: Your profit ratio.

Accumulate all the expenses and divide the number with all of your income.

This ratio should become smaller every 6 months; You make more money with a lower investment.

What did you do to improve this ratio? What worked? What didn't? What will you do next?

1. Reduce your cost?

2. Get more customers?

3. Sell more to each customer?

4. Sell more often to each customer?

5. Increase your prices?

Which number is it that you want to see improve the next six months and what will make that happen? 

Be more specific than just looking at revenue.

You can triple your sales tomorrow - but if you invest more than the increase in sales to make it happen, it's not really bringing you to a good place. You need to look at profits first - then break it down to understand what is driving financial performance and where the biggest potential is. 

You might be surprised your next big move should be increasing your investment in advertising? Or it could be to kick out your 1:1 customers and start selling your course in webinars instead. Break it down to learn and adjust. 

I also briefly want to mention the famous saying: time is money.

Whether you agree or not, one thing is for sure: to grow the business, you need to invest either time or money, or both.

So do that same exercise with time.

• How did you spend your time?
• Is your productivity on an upward or downward slope?
• What will you do to work more efficiently going forward?
• Will you hire a VA?
• A project manager?
• Eliminate something from your business that is robbing energy and making you slow down?

Clout

Finally, you want to keep an eye on your clout status. That is: how much influence do you have in your niche. How do people experience that influence?

This may be through the results you present, people you interviewed or media you wrote for, or who wrote about you. All signs, you are being taken seriously by people in your niche. 

I fx look at which guests I had on my podcast and which of them shared and promoted the episode. Specifically, I look at how many listened to the episode and learn which type of guests I should have more of in the 2nd half of the year and what I need to do to attract them. Now here is a big bold goal for me: I want Jay Shetty, Mel Robbins, and even Tony Robbins to be a guest someday! ;)

My determination to have great guests for you on the podcast actually led to another big goal I had: writing a book on human marketing. I used that book to raise my clout and reach out to some of the best marketers in the world.

And guess what?

95% have said yes!

Make your progress visible

Friend, if you were in business all this year it's important you both become aware of all you have achieved and all the progress you made. All you learned. 

And if you haven't started your business yet, appreciate all you learned in your current job. Or in your previous job. All you did to get to a point where you find the courage to start your business.

All you did to learn the ropes of an entrepreneur.

You've got this!

Go back and listen to:

• episode 31 about how to achieve goals
• episode 32 on what you should know before leaving your 9-5.

And if it's not close to a calendar half-year when you are listening to this episode, do this exercise anyway.

I know it's untraditional - but it works!

Grab a notebook and start evaluating your 5 categories of assets: Customers, conversations, content, cash, and clout.

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Alright, my friend, I would love to get into a conversation with you. 

What would you love to learn about in the next 6 months?

Go to my Instagram account and send me a DM - that's the small paper-plane icon you find under each post in case you are not familiar with DMs.

You can also post your wishes in the community:

Join us in The Course Creators Cafe on Facebook.