Stop Beating Yourself Up, and Start Following Your Numbers
I just got off of a call with one of my newer clients, and she just kept saying things like, “Monica, I’m not doing enough. I’m not good at business. I’m not disciplined. I’m not focused.” And finally, I stopped her and said, “You’re being really hard on yourself – and you’re being hard on yourself without any true evaluation of how you’re actually doing in your business.” I call this “emotional business management,” which is when we evaluate ourselves and our businesses based on our emotions. And, honestly, I love feeling emotions, and I think that emotions are really important, but we can’t always trust them.
Our emotions often lead us to believe that we’re doing way worse than we actually are – especially for us women entrepreneurs, who are very, very, very hard on ourselves.
I’d like to encourage you to let go of emotional business management and instead step into something that is so important: what I call “strategic business management.”
Strategic business management means evaluating yourself and your business based on concrete and specific numbers – not based on your emotions, what you think is happening, or anyone’s vague expectations.
In my Breakthrough Planner, I’ve created a business dashboard, where I invite entrepreneurs to choose four numbers to track throughout each month.
The four numbers that I recommend tracking are: 1. The number of people whom you ask for sales conversations; 2. The number of people with whom you have sales conversations; 3. The number of new clients that you sign; and 4. Your conversion rate, which is the number of sign-ups from sales conversations divided by the number of sales conversations you’ve had. I explain all of this further in the planner.
This business dashboard is so important because not hitting your goals doesn’t mean that you’re doing things wrong, that you don’t know enough, or that you’re not disciplined.
It simply means that you’re not focusing enough on your numbers.
When we move away from beating ourselves up, hoping and praying that things will be OK, and doubting our abilities – and instead follow the numbers – our businesses become so much easier, and so much more fun and joyful.
When you use a business dashboard, you know exactly what to do and how to evaluate yourself. You can end each day knowing that you did enough.
Now, I’m going to be explaining how to use a business dashboard in much more detail during our upcoming Breakthrough Planner Day this Saturday, September 17, where we’ll be planning our next 90 days together.
The good news is that my 90-day Breakthrough Planner is only $32 – and purchasing it gives you automatic free access to the Breakthrough Planner Day. Once you purchase the planner, you’ll get the information to come join us this Saturday.
So this week, I’d like to invite you to step away from emotional business management and move fully towards strategic business management.
Follow those numbers – I’ll see you Saturday!
