Sarah, welcome to this episode of the podcast. I'm so happy to be with you. I'm Sarah, if you don't know me, I am a business coach. I'm the creator of selling for weirdos. I help people uncomplicate their businesses, especially the teachers, the helpers and the givers of the world. 

Today, we are going to talk about evaluation. This is something I've talked about on the podcast more than once, but it is something I want to talk about today, because I think that this time of year everybody starts thinking about just sort of in the back of their mind, 2025 the next year to come, and it is a really good time to start a practice of like mini evaluations, so that when you get to the point where you are getting ready to plan for 2025 you have a data set to work from. And when I say data set, I don't mean like pages and pages of spreadsheets, columns of numbers. I'm talking about, you know, information that is a little more qualitative. When I talk about evaluation today, we're talking about really qualitative evaluation so that you can think about, you know, what feels good in your business, what's working and what you want to do in the new year.

 So we're going to talk today about four questions that I think make a really simple, really regular evaluation that you can do every day, every week. I don't know if I would do them every day, but you can do them and answer them on a regular basis, to create a data set from which you can make decisions and really think about how this year has gone, how a given month has gone, without having to, like, pour over your calendar and all the spreadsheets for hours and hours. This is all about making evaluation simple for now, for day to day, use, for helping you understand what's working in your business and and for planning for new things, be it a new year, a launch a new service, something else. So for me, there are a couple of important things about evaluation. 

The purpose of evaluation is not to be mean to yourself. I know that that is not how school grades worked. In school, in teaching, evaluation tended to be summative. It was either, what did you get and what did you didn't right, what didn't you? So, you know, sometimes grades feel kind of punitive in kind of evaluation we are talking about today, there is no punitiveness. This is not looking at your business and trying to figure out where you're failing. This is not looking at your business and seeing all the things you've done wrong. It's not looking at your business and trying to figure out what to fix, right? T

his is a version of evaluation, a day to day, version of evaluation, a month to month, week to week, version evaluation that really is based on what's working rather than what's wrong with you, because there's nothing wrong with you, right? It is a very sort of a core value in this kind of evaluation is that you are doing a good job, that you are a success right now, that you have what you need to be successful, and the data set you're creating is just about helping you do that better. 

The second thing about evaluation that I think is important is there is no need for it to be a whole day kind of thing. I think people think evaluate and data and they think it's got to be a big project. For my perspective, evaluation is like a 15 minutes a week kind of thing, which is, if we do it 15 minutes a week when we get to the point where we need to spend a little more time, or we want to, because we're planning for a new year, we're planning for a new quarter, we're doing something if we're doing regular, smaller evaluations. 

When we get to the point where we're trying to make bigger decisions, we already have all the data. Evaluation is not like do it once in a blue moon to the 100th degree. It's just like anything else. We can do it in smaller pieces and let those smaller pieces add up to big conclusions. Right? There are times where I do this evaluation week after week, and I find myself writing the same thing over and over that I want to do differently in like, the third or fourth time I write it, I think, like, oh, but because I'm writing it down week after week, it doesn't get so far. It's not six months down the road before I realize I need to make a change. That's the other thing. Doing this kind of smaller evaluation, doing evaluations on a smaller scale. 

On a regular basis, helps you to stay the course a little more effectively. Right? If we're constantly checking in with where we are and what's working and what we want to adjust, we don't wander off into the woods, right? It's like getting in the car and driving and taking a look at the map and then turning it off for four hours, versus checking in every couple of minutes, like I live in Pennsylvania. If you turned off the map for four hours and took a wrong turn on the highway, you could end up in New York state rather than Virginia. Like you could go entirely the wrong direction. 

You could be headed towards Ohio when you meant to be headed towards me, and that's not a great thing. We don't want to drive completely the wrong direction. So this kind of check in really makes a difference. So what I would propose to you today is this four question evaluation. This is something I use all the time. Have and I have for years. This is something I teach clients all the time. It is something I've probably done episodes about before, but here are the four questions I think really should go into an evaluation that you do maybe every week. 

The first question is, what's working? And I mean that what's working, this is the place we start evaluation, because it is much more effective, even for just our internal understanding of ourselves and what we do to start with, there are good things, right? It is very easy to jump right to the things that are going wrong. I had a client. I always start client calls like this too, with like, Hey, what's good? I had a client get on the call the other day, and she looked at me, and I was like, All right, let's get started. What's good? And she goes, No, I want to jump right in. I got some other stuff. And I was like, Well, tell me two good things first. And she's like, er, but the second good thing she told me. She was like, Oh, wait, you know that thing I wanted to talk about, maybe it's not actually a problem at all, because the thing that she was telling me that was good was the answer to her question. So sometimes we just haven't paused to to see it yet, and that is fascinating to me. So I am really diligent about what's good. 

The general rule that I use for myself and I share with people all the time is that for every if I write 10 things that are working, then I can write two things that I'm finding challenging or sorry, five. I have to write twice as many good things as I think are going to be problems, and that proportion reminds me that there's more good going on than I realize. Right? You might think you have 10 problems, but if you think you have 10 problems, write down 20 good things, because if you have 10 problems, there are 20 good things. We just have to focus on them. And our human brains are not great at that. Okay, so the first question is, what's working? The second question is, what do I want to do differently? So this is the place where things that are challenging come in, where the things that have been struggles, it's like, okay, well, what's working is I know how to talk to people about what I do. What I want to do differently is I want to talk about it more. Because one of the challenges I'm having is I don't think I'm making enough offers. 

Okay, that's the thing to do differently. But what you notice there is that because we go from what's working to what I want to do differently without in between going where did I go? Terribly wrong means that you're going to be kinder to yourself about it than you might be otherwise, and that's important. Like we want to build businesses where we are nice to ourselves. I mean, I want that for me and I want it for you. You may not realize you want it yet, but you do, I promise. So moving then to what do I want to do differently? Is like, Okay, how do I want to change based on what I know is working the next week, month, year, right? For example, last week this month, one of the things I'm working on is I want to make 120 offers, and I want to make 50 new connections.

 And last week, when I did my evaluation of last week, I usually do them Monday morning, because, in theory, I would like to do them Friday afternoon, but on Friday afternoon, I want to do nothing, so I don't I do them one day morning. On Monday morning, I sat down to look at my evaluation and do this, and it was like, what's working?

I made a ton of offers. What do I want to do differently? I didn't do a lot of outreach for new connections. So this week, I wanted to make sure that that happened, and I'm already, I think, like, I've had four one on one connects so far this week, and I've made, I don't know, like, 15 outreaches. And so that this week has been really different, and I'm really pleased about it so far. The next question is like, Okay, what's next? What are my next steps? So what's working? What do I want to do differently? What are my next steps? Most of the time, when we go from what's working to what do I want to do differently in the. 

Next Steps sort of write themselves, because, like in the example I just gave, I went from what's working, I made a lot of offers to what do I want to do differently. I want to make more outreach requests. And so what do I want to do next is, you know, what I did think about was how many outreach requests I wanted to make, where I wanted to make them.

 So for me, it was 20 and on LinkedIn, and where I wanted to find the names of the people I wanted to connect to. And so I it was just literally like, I know what's going well, I know what I want to change. How do I change it? Right? It's like, what are the steps? And then the last question, and this feels funny, but it is really important I have added this. I didn't add this into evaluation initially, for me a long time, for a long time, it was like, what's what's working? What do I want to do differently? What's next? It's very action oriented.

 Adding in this last question, the fourth one, really changed, sort of the depth of my evaluation. And the last question is, what do I want to let go of, which is tricky. In some weeks, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. A lot of times it's worry or a feeling of not being in control, or of trying to control things that aren't mine to control, or thinking I'm not good enough, or what people are going to think of me when I make 20 offers or outreaches, what the people I'm outreaching to on LinkedIn are going to think of me? And it really helps me to have this question at the end of the evaluation, because it's like this week, I think I wrote I want to let go of hiding, and I don't necessarily hide, but I do sort of, like dim my light a little bit sometimes, because I'm afraid that I'll be too much for people. That is sort of my default drum beat in my head, that, like, if I continue to do it at this rate, I'm going to be too much, and nobody's going to like me. 

And so for me, it was like, I want to let go of that drumbeat for a little while. I want to be just as out there as I'm going to be, and allow it to be what it is for this week and see where I end up. Right? I think that that question about what you want to let go of sometimes I get really strange answers, like things I don't expect, but they are always helpful. And so it feels like a funny question, maybe in this very action oriented evaluation, but it is a really important one, because you catch stuff there where it's like, Oh, why am I hanging on to that? How come I do? I really need it. The other thing I would say is there's one little bonus question I add in here sometimes that I don't use all the time, but I do sometimes, and it is what thought has been most helpful to me lately, whether it's the last week or the last month or the last couple of days, what thought has been most helpful in the last couple of weeks, I've been writing that one, and the thought that has been most helpful over and over again lately is I can never be too much for my people. 

There's another one I wrote for this past week, which was, I am not willing to be the barrier to my business's success, like I'm not willing to be the reason people don't get the help they need. And when I am hiding, when I am not saying as much, when I'm not doing the outreach, I am in the way, because that's about me. That that tendency to sort of stay small, and this thought that I'm not willing to be the barrier, I'm not willing to be the one in the way, really helps me to remember it's not about me. And so sometimes writing down like, what was I thinking that was really working for me, helps me to go like, Oh gosh. 

On days where it's not working for me, it's like, okay, what was I thinking when it was working? I can flip back in my notebook and find it and be like, Oh yeah, I can tap right back into that thought today. So for you, what? Here's the things I would ask of you. First, how are you evaluating them, right? Are you at all second? What kind of evaluations do you want to be doing and how often? And if you put these questions into play and you start using them, how often do you want to use them? What will they do for you? And then, you know, how could they be of help? I would maybe try them, see how they feel, and then maybe try them again a week later, see how they feel again, and just keep trying it and see how it goes. 

The goal here is to just have a check in with yourself, with your business, with your information about what's working, and then build that up over time. Because when I get to planning for 2025 what I get to do is flip through these weekly summaries, and it tells me way more than like just trying to scare up data in my computer because there's stuff everywhere. If you have questions, please reach out. I am always happy to talk to you about your questions, but also the podcast episodes. What's been helpful for you? If you think this episode is really useful, please feel free. 

To share it or subscribe or rate it. That's how other people find it. And so the more of that you do, the better. And it's always appreciated. And if you want to join us in offer hours, that's still happening, there is an offer hour on october 21 that you can sign up for if you come into my Facebook group, which is of the same name as the podcast. Podcast. It's called uncomplicating business for teachers, helpers and givers. You can find the link to sign up in there from here, happy evaluating, and I'll see you all in two weeks. You.