While it’s easy to get lost in the sales, revenue and strategic demands of you side-hustle or business, not all KPIs are about numbers and monetary results.
Whether you’re a side-hustler or a business owner, let’s not forget the reason for you jumping into entrepreneurship – get freedom. Freedom in time, money and place whilst making impact to people’s live and our planet.
How will we be able to do this if we lose ourselves and our vision in the process?
Below are few of the KPIs I measure myself with on top of the strategic and results-based KPIs I monitor on a monthly basis.
Energy ⚡
Energy is the currency of the universe.
And yet, it’s underrated whether you’re an employee, a side-hustler or a business owner.
How you protect and optimise your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy determines the quality of your life, wellbeing, creativity and financial output of what you do.
Below are few of the questions you can ask yourself to see how you do in this area:
- How are your energy levels?
- Do you come to work sluggish or enthused?
- When was the last time you worked out?
- Had a hearty meal?
- Did you recently treat yourself to celebrate your wins?
- When was the last time you stopped everything to meditate?
It’s time you take back the basic currency required to not just make a living, but LIVE A LIFE!
Connection 🤼
Life is about making meaningful connections and relationships.
In fact, you won’t thrive as an entrepreneur if you don’t have good relationships – who else will you sell to?
However, as much as we build ‘network’, it’s more important to not only cultivate the personal relationships we already have, but to make new meaningful ones.
Being an entrepreneur can feel really lonely if you’re just all about making money, but it doesn’t have to be.
I am introverted but I am proud to say that I have few meaningful relationships and connections that I can talk to in every area of life. Your inntroversion or extroversion should not be an excuse whether you can make meaningful connections with others.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you been building meaningful and intentional relationships?
- How’s your time with your family or partner
- When did you last have a difficult conversation with someone you needed to?
- Have you reached out to a potential mentor no matter how intimidating it is
- Are you still genuinely connecting with your community/followers?
It’s time you take back the basic currency required to not just make a living, but LIVE A LIFE!
Be a leader and connect with someone today.
Feedback 📝
Feedback says something about your how you did things and NOT about who you are.
When things go bad or don’t see things the way we planned it, it’s easy to take things personally especially in entrepreneurship.
It’s just feedback about how we did things but never about who you are.
When you keep this in mind, it’s a lot easier to proactively ask for it.
You have to remember that feedback is what keeps us growing.
One mistake I keep seeing other people do is: whenever they are trying to decide on something that will help them grow, they survey ALL people and ask them for advice. Unknowingly, some do it out of fear and as though, surveying everyone will ensure a good result.
However, once they do the very thing they are scared of, they stop asking for feedback. Why?
In my experience, doing the opposite in these two cases will grow us better.
When you know you’re called to do something, stop asking for other people’s reassurance as though it’s going to change the risks entailed in the calling. Just do it and exercise trust.
After you do it, then you ask for feedback to align how you do things in order for you to get better doing it.
Starting something new will always be scary and will always come with risks, so don’t waste time surveying people unless you’re collecting strategic market research questions.
Few pointers to help you assess yourself in this area:
- When was the last time you asked for feedback from your line manager or whoever you are reporting to?
- Have you tried asking for feedback from your partner/spouse as to how you are showing up in your relationship?
- How’s the feedback of your community or clients?
- Do you have survey in place for your clients before, in the middle and after they work with you?
Vision ✨
Vision ensures you’re heading in the right direction.
While ‘right direction’ is subjective, it’s important that you have a vision for everything you do lest you just keep doing things for the sake of doing it or for the sake of pointless achieving.
Vision does not only mean a place, a title, or a number on your bank account.
As for me, vision is ultimately how you want to see yourself and how you feel about doing the things you want/need to do.
If it’s only a place, when you reach, what’s next? You will only keep moving.
If it’s only a title, when you get it, what will be next? You will only keep climbing.
If it’s only a number, when you start generating that money, is it really clear what you will do with it?
Oftentimes, we think we know what to do once we achieve these three.
But… if your vision is created from the inside instead of the external, it will be much more fulfilling.
You realise that your vision is something you need to learn to always embody.
You will feel like you’ve already arrived and yet there’s more to explore externally to learn more about your internal world.
The achievements of the external world should only teach us to learn more about ourselves and how we connect with the entirety of the world.
Think about these questions to see if you’re still aligned with your vision:
- How do you know you have ‘arrived?’
- How does your day look like from the moment you wake up and go to bed when you’ve reached your goal?
- How do you feel living your life and doing what you want to do?
- Who are the people you are with when you get there?
- Who are the new people you want to be with when you arrived at your vision?
- Who do YOU need to be to get there?
Boundaries 🚫
Boundary is what keeps the world in order.
Whether it’s a physical boundary in the realms of the world or human relationships, boundary keeps the planet in place and keeps the world in peace.
Wars are created for crossing boundaries.
Global warming and many other climate challenges are due to the boundaries of nature being crossed.
If we translate it in our day-to-day personal life and relationships, disagreements, misunderstandings, feuds and even lawsuits happen because of boundaries defiled.
It was only recently that the world started waking up to the concepts of boundaries in personal relationships and this is great.
In our work and business life, it’s important that we also learn to live this out too.
Few questions to help you assess yourself in this area:
- Can you say you respect other people’s boundaries – online and offline?
- What boundaries have you set between you and other people?
- Have you finally cut the unhelpful/toxic relationship?
- How are you talking to yourself?
- How do you talk about yourself to other people?
- Are you taking your day offs and holidays?
Take time to learn new ways of healthy boundaries and unlearn some that no longer serve you.
Gratitude 🙏
Gratitude is the secret behind a peaceful and joyful life.
Most of life’s regrets and anxieties are caused by failing to remember.
When we fail to remember the good times and how we are already blessed at the moment even when you still aren’t close to your goals, it’s the start of our suffering.
It’s really simple, but are you doing it?
It’s not enough to just say “I know it, I am grateful.”
You really need to either speak it out loud or write it down.
When you speak it out loud, that same frequency of your voice in thankfulness reverberates in your whole body – meaning you entire body, cells and soul hears.
When you write it down, it is as though you imprint it on your brain as you write.
It’s one thing I always teach my coaching clients with – always speak it or write.
Here are some questions to see how you do in this area:
- Do you take time to write down your wins every month?
- When was the last time you prayed?
- Are you confident to say you thank everyone you meet?
- How can you express gratitude towards others beyond saying thank you?
- Have you thanked yourself for how it’s serving you?
I hope this blog helped you see a better and happier picture of goal setting and reviewing them.
Setting goals and KPIs should not feel like you’re listing your shortcomings just because you didn’t hit that follower count, sales and revenue goal.
Above everything, you get to decide how you want to measure yourself and if you do, why not measure the things that make you feel life is awesome, right?
If you enjoyed reading this blog, reshare it on your social media and tag me at @trainwithdanenow. 🤳
Ad astra,
Dane✨
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