Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Are you ready to live from rest instead of rush? Join Life & Business Coach, Speaker, and Author Teresa McCloy each week for conversations, stories, and practical wisdom from people doing what matters in their personal and professional lives. This is an invitation to do life differently through rhythms, routines, and practices that help us live the life God has for us.
Teresa McCloy [00:00:01]:
Hey. Hey there, friend. Welcome back to the doing what matters podcast. My name is Theresa McCloy, and I am so glad to be back with you. Or if this is your first time listening in, welcome to the podcast. We talk on this podcast about all things that matter in both life and business. We do it through the lens of how we're using our gifts for God's glory and living from a place of rest, not rush. Life and business and work do not have to be from a place of rush.
Teresa McCloy [00:00:39]:
I truly believe that, and I hope I model that for you in my life, in the work that I do and the content that I bring into the world. But we have been in a series here on this podcast recently called the seven P's of business, and we have gone through a few of those already. But today we're getting ready to dive back in to this series. It's eight weeks long total. We started back on episode number 282. So if you want to go all the way back, if this is your first time listening, welcome. And you might want to go back and start from that space. You might want to just listen to this episode and see if it's content and information that will help you in the work that you're doing.
Teresa McCloy [00:01:26]:
And as I say that, I want to say that, I know that you may be listening, and you're coming from a place of maybe more of a ministry space or a nonprofit space. These seven P's actually fit in any of those things. Any way that you're building an organization, these seven P's are going to fit. Now, you might not have the. The P of product or services, but for the most part, all the rest of them are going to fit in any organization you're building. So listen in. And today we're going to be talking about kind of an odd word, but it is the p of particulars. Now, so far, we have done your purpose.
Teresa McCloy [00:02:16]:
We have done a plan. We have talked about products and services, and today we're gonna be talking about particulars. Now, obviously, if you know my sense of humor, I chose this one just cause I thought it was fun and clever, but it actually fits for what I use it for. I'm using it for the idea that particular things that you track in your business matter. I actually looked up the definition of the word back when I chose it, and it super fits right into this category. Now, in the business world and business lingo, many times, it's called your key performance indicators. I think that's kind of boring. So we're going with the word particulars.
Teresa McCloy [00:03:04]:
What are the particular things that you need to take a look at on a regular basis? And so for myself in my own story, as you heard me talk earlier, I've talked about it on the podcast, just some of the money mindset work that I had to do. And along with money mindset often comes this idea of tracking things in your business. Now, I am the type of entrepreneur that is constantly looking at numbers, but there's a difference between running numbers in your head for, like, revenue and expenses. How many sales you might have made, or how many people you have in a program, or how many customers came through the door. Those are all numbers you're running in your head. And that's the way many times I thought I had track of my business because I was always running numbers in my head, but I really wasn't writing those numbers down and tracking them on a regular basis. So as I shared a few episodes back, I actually hired someone, worked with them for almost an entire year on putting together a dashboard type system for my business to track things in my business. Now, it doesn't have to be that complicated, and to be honest, I don't even use that big of a dashboard anymore.
Teresa McCloy [00:04:31]:
But it was helpful to see what the numbers in your business tell you. And I call these your particulars. What are the particular things that you need to look at on a regular basis that will tell you the health, the well being of your business. Now, a lot of systems will teach you that you need to be doing that on a weekly basis, and there may be those exceptions to the rules of businesses that do need to do this number tracking system that I'm going to talk about weekly. But for most businesses, if you will do it monthly, that's going to get you a long way down the road, because let's be honest, a lot of you aren't doing it at all. You may not be doing it at all. So that was a general statement. But correct me if I'm wrong, but you probably are not doing it on a regular basis.
Teresa McCloy [00:05:31]:
I wasn't either. Just in the last three years have I tracked particulars on a regular basis. Now, I again had numbers in my head, but those numbers weren't always what exactly was happening. So let's dive in. If you would love to have this Handout and this little worksheet that I have, I actually have a free download for each of these episodes. This one is the reallifeprocess.com forward slash particulars. So you have to spell it particulars. So the reallifeprocess.com forward slash particulars.
Teresa McCloy [00:06:10]:
I say that because I am not the world's best speller. I often reverse letters. It's just something I have dealt with since first grade. Spell it right, you'll get the free download, and you can go back and get the downloads for all of the episodes by using that p word, such as purpose, plan, products, and particulars. All of these are downloads. And then we have a master download, which is the word seven, and you can get that. But downloads for each of these episodes in these series particulars is the one for this week. There's a couple of pages in there, but if you like to watch the podcast on YouTube, you can also see me walk through it here as we look at this particular p in our business.
Teresa McCloy [00:07:00]:
So let's dive in. Here we go. Particulars. Many times we'll call this a scorecard. We have someone on our team here at the real life process, my business, that keeps track of the scorecard. And there, usually in this scorecard you're putting together are about five to, at most 15 numbers that you'll want to track. Now, if you get over 15, you're probably getting too deep in the weeds, too far into the details, and you want to stay pretty high level. And we'll talk about maybe what some of those numbers look like here in a bit.
Teresa McCloy [00:07:42]:
But five to 15 numbers that you're tracking, we do this on a Google spreadsheet. That's all we have laid out is a spreadsheet with the numbers. Lots of them are divided into categories by certain parts of our business. And it's, it's just that simple. We sum it up. We total it up. We total it up by the month. We total it up by the quarter.
Teresa McCloy [00:08:05]:
So five to 15 numbers that give you a pulse of your business, the fewer the better. Keep it as simple as possible. Track monthly. Again, there is those exceptions that might track on a weekly basis, but I think for most of you, it would be tracking monthly. So just ask yourself that question. Is there anything that I would need to know every single week, where I'm at on that? The scorecard really begins to tell you a story about your business. It will begin to tell you what marketing might be working, what marketing might not be working. It will begin to tell you if your expenses are too much and if you need to be watching in a certain area that you can dive into.
Teresa McCloy [00:08:51]:
I'll use that as an example of why you don't want to get too detailed. You may just put in general expenses and put that in your scorecard, a revenue number and an expense number. If you see that something feels off, you can go look back in your bookkeeping software to see in that, in your profit and loss or expense categories. Why this month, maybe the expenses are up by 20% or whatever they might be, and you can find the answer to that question there. So you don't need to have that on the scorecard in great detail. You just need to have a lump sum. So I want to you to hear me in this, too, because I put this off for a really long time. I'd been in business almost three years before I really started tracking well, because I felt like I didn't know where to start.
Teresa McCloy [00:09:45]:
And I want to say, begin with what you have now. If you know four numbers and you've been, you can get four things down. Start tracking those four things. You can always add in things as you go to get to the ten to twelve that might be the most important for a lot of you as a small business owner. There might not be more than ten numbers. Track for three months and then review that you're tracking the right numbers. Are these the right numbers? That will tell me something. It might even take you three to six months for you to start to see a story around your numbers and try to see things.
Teresa McCloy [00:10:25]:
Oh, there was a big shift, or there's something that we can celebrate. So let's talk then about how we build this scorecard. First of all, just on the back end of it, just the process itself, you need to decide who's responsible, who's going to be responsible for deciding what particular things to track. Now, many times that's going to be possibly you as the owner of your business. It might be you and your bookkeeper, an accountant, someone. That's, if you have people on your team, it might be someone that's sitting right alongside of you or right beneath you, or already does things with the numbers. But you're going to decide two things. What numbers to track and then who's responsible for collecting the score card data.
Teresa McCloy [00:11:18]:
I have found in my own business, it's easier just to let one person collect all that data and they know where to go in and grab it. We tried the method of people sending in their data from their department or what they did, and it was easier just to let that one person go in and grab the data from wherever they wanted it. Grab whatever numbers from revenue or from a program that you might have, or from inventory or whatever that might be one person grabbing those numbers. Now, again, if you're a solopreneur, you may be the one grabbing them, and that is totally fine. What you'll want to do in that case is set aside a time every month that you do this. I have someone that does it for me at this stage of my business. So I set aside a time every month to review the numbers and to look at those numbers. But you may have to set aside a time to grab the numbers and then also look at them putting on both hats.
Teresa McCloy [00:12:20]:
So when are you going to do it? When will you have this report, so to speak, the scorecard done? The way we do it in our business, there's no right or wrong way. The more important thing is to make the decision about it. The way we do it in our business is we do it in. I want to bring, for example, we're in the month of May. We will be having a June meeting. So I'm bringing the numbers from April to that meeting to share with the team. So I'm bringing the scorecard from April to share with the team. And that way the person or even yourself you're sharing from a month behind.
Teresa McCloy [00:13:06]:
Now, I already know pretty much how the May numbers are going to shake out, but I'm only sharing with my team up to April so that the numbers are accurate, the scorecard is done, and we just have an agreement with the person who does that, that they're done by the first of the month for the month before. Once you get on a system and a process, by the way, we'll be talking about that next week on our podcast, is processes. Once you get that process nailed down, it feels like you're getting the right data in a timely manner, even though it's is 30 days back. That's okay. So who's going to gather it? When are they going to get it done by? Whether that's you or someone else on your team. It could even be someone that's working for you in bookkeeping or something like that as well. And then part of this, too, is each of those why? How do we come to the numbers that we're tracking? Let me say that how do we come to the numbers that we're tracking? Each of these numbers should mean something. It should have a reason why it either target ties to your marketing or it ties to your sales or it ties to customer engagement.
Teresa McCloy [00:14:23]:
Ties to employee engagement, depending on what your business is. But there's a reason why you track that number. You might be asking, where do I know that from? Remember, you can go back a couple of episodes where we were talking about your purpose, your vision, and your mission. The vision statements that you made for the next three years are the exact same things that you'll want to track in your business. So if you have a certain number of sales that you have a vision for at the end of three years, then you want to track sales. If you have a certain number of clients that you want to work with, you'll want to track clients. So whatever your goals are, whatever your vision is on that vision statement, these numbers should tie to that. You don't want to track something that doesn't tie to a vision.
Teresa McCloy [00:15:20]:
So this is where all of these p's start to integrate together. So decide the goal for the month which will help you get to that vision. And that's then what you get to put on your CEO hat and you get to look at the numbers through that lens. Visions out, maybe on your desk, and your numbers are out on your desk and you're saying, wow, we're moving towards that vision, or whoo, we're not getting there as quick as I thought. What could we do to change? That example for me is one of the things that matters in the type of business that I have is the size of my email list. So I'm always watching that number and looking to see where is it at. Is it growing? Because that's how we communicate the most with our current clients, our current customers, and anybody new that we're bringing in. So I'm looking at ways to grow that list and I'm looking at ways that where those numbers are at, because that should reflect then into my sales and into my marketing.
Teresa McCloy [00:16:34]:
So you want to track things that are at the beginning of your sales funnel, in the middle of your sales funnel, all the way through to sales. The end, you may want to track things like customer follow up. A lot of your vision statements would come down to, if you have a team of people, there's team people on your team that might be responsible to make sure that vision happens. So they need to know these numbers. They need to know what's happening. They need to be a part of helping you set the number goal for the quarter or for the year, whatever that might be, so that they're responsible for that number. A lot of systems will teach you that everyone should have a number that matters to them. Now that might not be on this scorecard because this is a bigger vision, but everyone should have a number that matters to them.
Teresa McCloy [00:17:33]:
And that's part of a whole nother conversation we won't get into today. But who needs to see these numbers is another thing you want to consider. So I share most of these numbers with my team. We're a pretty small team. When we have our little executive team meeting, the intercor people that are on my team, we share it there. I usually share most of these numbers quarterly. When we have all of our contracted people meet together, we share these numbers quarterly. I don't always share all of them.
Teresa McCloy [00:18:04]:
I don't harp on all of them, but I think they're important for people to see the progress or where things are falling short. There's a statement, I'm not sure who said it or who, I won't quote the right person, probably, but what gets measured gets done, and that's what these, this p of particulars is. This scorecard is a measurement everyone on the team is in. Numbers that are clear for your team. Numbers can give accountability. People that are accountable, appreciate numbers. Numbers are clear. You can't argue with the numbers.
Teresa McCloy [00:18:42]:
They either are moving up or they're moving down, whichever direction that you want them to go. Numbers can create some healthy competition, whether that's competition for yourself or within your team or whatever that might be. But numbers can help with that. Numbers drive towards that vision. They create teamwork, and they help you solve the problem or the issues that you have, which we'll be talking about in a couple of more podcasts, is the p of problems. So if you have a problem, you may see it. If you have a process that's broken, you may see it show up in your numbers because the numbers are defined and they're hard numbers. So in this particular episode, as we talk about this p of particulars, it really is just coming down to doing it, making it happen, holding yourself accountable.
Teresa McCloy [00:19:40]:
That, yes, I'm going to start tracking at least four or five things, and then I'm going to add on as I go into the next quarter and decide, oh, that might be a great number for me to track. And in every industry, there are different numbers that might matter if you have inventory, that might matter if you need to promote through, number of people through the door, or number of clients, or number of people on your email list, number of products sold, there's all different numbers that you might track. You might track some numbers for a season, and then once you've solved that problem, you don't have to track that one anymore. But you're usually always going to have, like I said, 510, 15 solid numbers that you'll want to track within your team. Within the little download I have, I actually have a little chart there for you. Already have it done. You have no excuse not to dive in to starting to track your particulars. This is the lifeblood of your business.
Teresa McCloy [00:20:48]:
What I noticed for myself two or three years ago, when I really started doing these seven p's, when I really leaned in, I, my mindset shifted how I thought of my business, and I began to feel like I was a big girl, that I was really running a business the way it should be ran, that I had a purpose, that I had a plan, that I knew what my products and services were and that I was tracking my numbers, the particular things that mattered in my business. So I just want to challenge you. Put on your big girl pants or your big boy pants and start running your business like a business. Even if you are part time, you are a business owner. And I want it to be a place of energy for you. I want it to be a place of fun for you. I want it to feel great for you to work in your business. And these things that we're talking about can make all the difference in whether you feel that it is a reality that you have a business, whether you feel that you are living it to the fullest of what God has given you to do out in the world, and that you're responsible and you're taking ownership of this business.
Teresa McCloy [00:22:20]:
So I just want to encourage you. Dive into these p's. This one in particular. If you have some mindset around this reach out, let me know. Tell me about it. I want to hear. Come over and join our free community. You can get to that through the show notes.
Teresa McCloy [00:22:37]:
We have some conversations in there about these kinds of things as well. I want to come around you. I want to encourage you. There are others out in the world just like you that are putting on their business hat and diving in and becoming real business owners with their talents and their gifts and their abilities. So today, it's all about the numbers. It's all about the particulars. I know you can do it. I believe in you.
Teresa McCloy [00:23:06]:
Let's dive in. So remember this week as you're looking at these things, that every ordinary day has an extraordinary moment. You just have to look at them. I believe that with all my heart. Maybe your extraordinary moment this week will just be, wow. I identified my five to six numbers that I want to start tracking. Maybe your extraordinary moment will be around something in a relationship. It will be around time you took with someone that you loved.
Teresa McCloy [00:23:34]:
It will be about checking a box of something that you got done. It would be about out on a great walk in your body. Whatever it might be. Those moments are all around you and I want to encourage you. Go find those moments. Go experience them so you can live from a place of rest, not rush. I'll be back next week. We've got a couple of more peas to finish up this series.
Teresa McCloy [00:23:59]:
If you are loving this podcast series, go leave us a review. That means so much to me and I know that this is content then, that you enjoy as we live life and and business together for God's glory. So have a great week, friends, and I'll see you back next week on the doing what Matters podcast.