Hey friends
Sooo, January came and went and now the year really gets going.
Are you still sticking with your new year’s resolutions? If you’re trying to break a bad habit this year, these action steps will help you get back on track.
Now let’s crack on with this week’s best bits...
Business
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” is one of Peter Drucker’s most famous maxims.
Do you currently use business reporting + metrcis dashboards to manage the performance of your business?
When I started my first venture, a commercial cleaning company, I hardly tracked any metrics, other than the monthly management accounts, to see how the business was performing. It took me 5 years to adopt my first set of metrics dashboards - everything from weekly sales and finance performance to operational performance and marketing performance.
Fast forward to launching my rent to rent business and I had dashboards for everything from research results to identify my Goldmine area based on rental spread, room rates and supply + demand in different postcode areas to marketing performance of SpareRoom and OpenRent, occupancy rates, void periods and revenue generation per room and maintenance expenditure.
Why did I do this? Because having these dashboards in place gave me key metrics and performance indicators, allowing me to make better, more informed decisions to improve the business and to make changes to increase efficiency, revenue and margins.
If you don’t currently have any metrics dashboards set up for your business, here is a collection of 11 free templates to get you started!
Fitness
Since turning 40, I’ve taken more of an interest into my general health and keeping track of some important markers like cholesterol, blood pressure + ECG, diabetes and body composition.
For the last couple of years I’ve taken an annual health assessment which reviews all of these markers to let me know where I’m at or what changes I need to make in my lifestyle - a health dashboard of sorts!
My first health assessment pointed out that my blood pressure was too high. After keeping track of my eating habits for a couple of weeks and speaking with a nutritionist, this was a result of eating too much food on the go with high salt content. So I started to cook more and cut out processed foods.
Last year’s assessment pointed out that my cholesterol was too high. Because I’d been tracking my food consistently, I put this down to cooking with too much butter + oil. So I cut out butter and started using teaspoons of oil to cook instead of free pouring.
The lesson? Your health is more important than anything else. Good health enables you to enjoy life and have energy for your business or career. Yes it requires work, but it’s well worth it in the long run.
Life
Last weekend I spent time carrying out a monthly review of all the tasks I did (and didn’t!) complete in January and the progress I made towards my goals for 2022 and ultimately my 3 year goals for 2024.
It took me about 90 minutes to review my journal, my Asana dashboard and my goals dashboard and was an opportunity to reflect on what went well, what didn’t (and needs to change) and put a plan in place for this month to continue the momentum.
We tend to underestimate how much progress we make towards our goals because we’re always looking ahead to what hasn’t been achieved yet instead of looking back and seeing how far we’ve come.
Think about incorporating a weekly or monthly review of your own to stay motivated and encouraged towards achieving your own goals this year.
Favourites of the Week
Podcast: The Drop Out. This has been on my list for a while and I’ve binged through it this week - it’s that good. The podcast charts the rise and fall of Theranos, a breakthrough health tech company and the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire - Elizabeth Holmes (once heralded as “the next Steve Jobs”). So many lessons in this podcast series, it’s well worth the listen.
Question: From James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter:
“If you know what you want, why are you waiting?”
Tech: Check out Alfread app. If you’re like me and bookmark a bunch of articles but never get round to reading them, Alfread will help you errr, read them, through habit forming and gamification. And it’s free!
Bonus: If you’re a bit bored, create a little melody. Speed it up. Slow it down. Change notes. Repeat.