Melissa My Marketing Coach shares strategies for continuous improvement toward your goals. The episode emphasizes evaluation and planning as keys to success, helping you improve consistently throughout the year rather than waiting for annual reviews.
Welcome.
I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time.
Well, hello. Hello ladies. How's it going? Hope you're having a fabulous day. Wherever you are listening to this, you may notice the audio is a little different. I am out on a walk and I was thinking about you and I thought I would record this for you and share with you what I was thinking, what I'm thinking about. It's a beautiful feels like spring morning, but it's still, it's just at the end of January. And so that's really what I wanted to talk with you about today, the end of the month, the end of the first month of this year. And so whether you're listening to this near the end of January or near the end of another month or a week, whatever, it's going to be applicable and super valuable. But it's a beautiful day here. I'm out with Ginger for a walk, just got my hair cut and have a speaking engagement today. And it's going to be a great day and I hope it's going to be a great, I wish you a great day also. But it's the end of the month and I am thinking so much about setting us up for success this year, especially around this first hundred days of the year. And it's such a great time to set ourselves up for success, to create that momentum to carry us. Well, not really to carry us because we continue to create momentum. Right? And remember, we are, are in charge of our own momentum. We create, we're responsible, we are responsible for creating our own momentum. So January, the end of the month, what I want to really encourage you to consider is taking time to evaluate. And you may have heard me talk about this before, but I'm not going to stop talking about it because evaluation is the key to continually getting better in your business as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, as a service provider. It's your key. It's your key to getting better at sales. It's your key to making more money. So I'm going to keep talking about it and I'm going to keep talking about it today as a part of creating, setting yourself up for success for the rest of the year. So the end of the month, I just encourage you to create this as a habit that you do at the end of every month or Every week I evaluate and score my weeks and it's been so helpful. And so evaluation encompasses three things. Right? But before we get to that, I want to just remind you that whatever happens in January stays in January, right? Whether it was a great month or not a great month, it doesn't, it doesn't mean anything for the rest of the year, right? You still have the next 11 months to create what you want to create, right? And so a lot of times we get superstitious almost, right? Or we're like, well, January wasn't good. That must mean the rest of the year is going to not be great. Or wow, January was my best month ever. I guess this is going to be a great year. Yes, it sounds great, but it's not true, Right? We still are responsible for creating the results we want to create. So if you had a great January, congratulations. That was awesome. I'm so glad to hear it. But you still got to show up and do the work. February, March, April, May, all the rest of them, right? And if January wasn't a great month, that's okay too. I want you to do this evaluation. I'm walking over ice right now. Do this evaluation. Maybe you're hearing it crack in the background. It's on my path though, so it's not like I'm walking out onto the lake or anything. I want you to do this evaluation. Learn everything that you can from January and let's make some changes for February. So as your coach, that is what I'm going to suggest. So let's get on to evaluation. You always do three things when you evaluate and in this specific order. Because in this specific order will help your brain to respond in a much more productive learning way, in a much more productive learning posture. And that's what we want to have in order to make evaluation useful for us. Right? So the first area, first question is all around, what worked? What are you celebrating? What worked? Where did you see your growth? All the positives, where did you, what gains did you see? What wins did you have? And if you've been recording your three wins every day like I have, and then your three wins for every week like I have, you can just go back and look at those and remind yourself of all the wins, all the celebrations. What worked for you? Where did you see your gains? Right? Write them all out. And remember, this process doesn't have to take an entire day. You don't have to do a three day retreat. This can be 15 minutes, 30 minutes. Whatever time you have, just do it, right? Don't let time keep you from learning and growing. Okay, so what worked? What are you celebrating? Where were your gains, your wins? That's the first area of evaluation. And if you are in a place where you want to do it right now, you can do it along with me. Great. Press pause and I want you to write your list. Okay. If you're driving or walking like I am, probably not a great idea. Okay. And then the second area is what didn't work? Where are your opportunities for improvement? Right. What do you want to see improved? What do you want to see working better? What do you. What. Where did you fall short? Right. And just take an honest look. This is just data. This is not us taking a break to beat the crap out of ourselves. That's not the point. The point is learning. We're not failing, we're just learning. Okay? It's just data. So as a CEO, which is what you are if you running your own business, I want you to take a look at the bit at the business. Right. Take a look at salesperson, Melissa, operations person Melissa, marketing person Melissa. How did they do? What didn't work? Where were the opportunities for improvement? Right. And make your list of all those things. Right. Again, if you're doing this along with me, you can press pause, write down the things, and let's keep going. Okay. Now the third area is what do you want to do different? How are we going to iterate? So if you look back at the list of what worked, what didn't work, it becomes very clear, what do we want to do differently? And if you include some of your measurable results in what worked and what didn't work, the first two areas, then you can include what you want to do differently in terms of measurable results, whether that's revenue, whether it's number of new people you added to your email list, whether it's number of email marketing pieces that you sent out, whatever you're measuring that you have have chosen as the parts of your marketing sales plan that you want to be measuring and hitting targets on, you can include that in this. What we want to do differently, what do we. How can we improve? What are we learning? What are our biggest lessons? What are your biggest lessons from this month? And list all those things out. Okay? That is where the learning is. And just spend time with it and then consider what are the things you want to change? Right. And so that's our evaluation, and that is super, super important. Now let's think about what are the actions we're going to take for this Coming month on these items that we want to change. Right? And create a little plan for yourself. And what do you want to try next? Business is about a lot of experimentation. So when we run the experiment, we ran the experiment of January, there's always going to be things that work. There's always going to be things that didn't work. Okay? It's not, you know, a lot of times our brains like to tell us that it's all working or it's all not working. Usually for me, my brain, my mind likes to go to, none of it's working, nothing's working. But that's never true, right? It's never all or nothing. That's somewhere in between. And so when we take the time and sometimes we have to force ourselves to find the things that are working and then also look at the things that aren't working, then the lessons, the opportunities for improvement become so apparent. And that is how you grow and learn and get better and build the big, beautiful, money making, impact, having joy, creating business that you dream of. Because I know that's your dream. Otherwise you wouldn't have listened this far into this podcast, right? And I believe in you. I know you can do it. You're doing a great job. Stick with me and we will get there together. And of course, this podcast will be here for you each week. But if you would like to work with me on a closer level, I invite you to check out my website, book a call and let's talk talk about how we can help you get from where you are now to where you want to be. I do take private one on one clients and I have openings now. And if that's something that you're feeling called to, I would love to talk with you about it. All right? Okay. So get your evaluation, get your plan together for the coming months. What's the goal? What's your action plan? What's your belief plan? Right? And let's go and have a fabulous February. All right, my friends, I will talk to you next time. Bye.
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