080 | The Power of Evaluating Your Efforts

Often we set goals and don’t ever look at them again or determine whether our efforts are working or not. We just keep doing the same things over and over again and staying in the same place year after year.

Enter evaluations. Evaluations allow you to see whether your efforts are working, and if not, decide what you need to tweak to propel yourself forward in achieving your goals.

In this episode, I’m teaching you the evaluation process I learned from my business coach that I’ve been implementing in all areas of my business and life for the last year. I share how the method works and give you some real-life evaluations from my clients and me to show you how to apply it.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• why evaluations are so important
• the evaluation process I teach all my clients and use personally
• real-life evaluations to help you learn to apply the process

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Resources mentioned

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Work with me

If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call.

Connect with me

Social media: @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Happy New Year. How are we already at the end of 2021. Time is flying is so crazy. With it being the end of the year, I thought it would be a great time for us to talk about reflection and evaluation of your efforts to achieve your goals. So I’ve always done evaluations or look backs or reviews of my year. But I learned a great method for evaluations for my business coach last year that I find so useful. So I’ve been using it all year for lots of different things I evaluate each month specifically as related to my business goals. I evaluate specific things in my business like individual coaching, calls, consultations, webinars, etc. I evaluate my parenting like reflecting on my day, especially if it was a particularly rough one with my kids and apply this process. And I’m currently doing it for my year. By the time you hear that I will have done it for the year. You can literally use this process for so many different things. All my clients do it for their monthly efforts with their money and I’m gonna teach it to you today. But first, let’s talk about why it’s even important to evaluate the things you’re doing in first place. Evaluations let you know how you’re doing as you work to achieve your goals. So you can see if you’re on track or if you need to tweak something and you can easily see which things are working which want to keep doing and which things need to change. When you evaluate you know exactly what you need to do going forward and to make a plan often we set goals and don’t ever look at them again we don’t take the time to figure out whether our efforts are working or not we just keep doing the same things over and over again and all then staying in the same place year after year so when you evaluate your APR to move yourself over So much more quickly, because you can see, okay, this thing is good, I’m gonna keep doing this. And that thing isn’t working, I’m going to stop doing that. And try this other thing over here and see what happens. And it’s basically a method of evaluating that my coach taught me, when you’re done, when you look at what worked, what didn’t work, and what you’re gonna do differently next time. It doesn’t have to be super long, maybe you know, two or three things for each category. But you always want to start with what work because our human brains are wired to find all the problems and everything is wrong. And then your boy Your training is gonna heighten that, right? If you’re anything like me, you can easily find things in work and isn’t wrong and your vertical yourself. And if it’s not exactly perfectly right, then you fail. Right, all that. So before you dive into all the things that went wrong, let’s start with what worked because it’s always something that worked, even if it’s something you think is too small to acknowledge. That was a bit For me seeing those little things as things that worked for example I felt confident when I did this or I explained that concept well I’ve been able to see okay like those are pretty good I think they’d work and not just rushing past them because they’re not some huge Monday Little things among middle We’re going to of course But don’t ignore those quotes Small things Don’t ignore those small things. The more you do this, the easier it will be to find the things that worked. So you’re training your brain to look for the things that went well. And each time you acknowledge them, it’s like little mini celebrations of the things. So in the evaluation process, thinking about all the things that work will shift your brain to a more positive place. And then from there, you can look at the things that didn’t work. What did you do or not do that didn’t work? Where were you thinking something that wasn’t serving you? Were you experiencing negative emotions around whatever you’re evaluating. So if I’m thinking, I’m never gonna get the hang of this in relation to whatever my goal is, it’s probably not gonna be very helpful in trying to reach my goal, right? Or it could be something like, I didn’t give myself enough time to do this thing ahead of time, and I was rushing to get it done. And I’m going to give you some actual examples of things that have come up in my client evaluations. So you can see specifically how you can apply this to your money as well. But you go through things that didn’t work or that could be improved and then you decide what you want to do differently next time When we’re looking at what you What to do differently next time You want to tie it to those things that didn’t work. So you know that these things don’t work? How are you going to change it up next time to see how the result changes. So for example, one of the things I said just now, in the section about what didn’t work was thinking something like, I’m never gonna get the hang of this. So one thing I could do differently is think about all the other times I thought I was gonna get the hang of something, but then I did it. And that way I can redirect my brain to how that same process can apply here. Or the other example was not giving myself enough time to get something done. So something I could do differently is to plan for double time I think I’ll need next time. You want to be as detailed as possible in your what to do differently section because this section will show you exactly what to try next time. So it will give you a roadmap of you know what you’re gonna do. And then when you try those things you’ll evaluate again and determine whether those things are things you want to keep, or if you need to try something else. So that’s the process for evaluating when you’re doing the video. We should make sure it’s focused on you so what you were thinking what you were feeling your actions for example I mentioned that I evaluate my parenting different situation I come up with my kids and I could say well It didn’t work isn’t good weren’t listening To me but I can All right I can only get for myself and how actually So real life example, one day I told my kids, it was anything to toys for quiet time, because they both use internet these days. So we did quiet time and didn’t have time. But they said, Okay. And when I came back, they were still playing. And I reminded them a couple of times, like, hey, it’s time to clean up, it’s time to go upstairs. And after reminding them, you know, third or fourth time, they still hadn’t done it. I got frustrated, and I yelled. And when I was thinking about the situation after the fact, like doing my valuation, if I said, my kids weren’t listening to me, and what didn’t work session, what was I going to put in the what to do different session? All right, I can’t control whether they decide to listen the first time or not. So instead, when I was looking at that, one of the things I said didn’t work was me reminding them multiple times to the point of frustration, and annealing. And what I would do differently is use a timer and tell them they have X amount of time to finish playing, and Y amount of time to clean up. That’s something I can control. Right. And we had had success with the timer in the past. And so I was wrong on that. Like, okay, let me try that in this situation. Alright, so now let me give you some examples of things my clients have included in these sections in their evaluations each month to give you some ideas of the kinds of things you can be looking at as you start evaluating your financial progress each month and working to improve your money. So some things that they put into what worked section. Feeling confident, staying under budget for most categories, I was able to pay the amount I wanted toward that, I planned ahead for flights for vacation. I decreased my spending in certain categories. And this came up multiple times. And usually it was something like eating out or entertainment. I thought this process was easy. I realized looking at my numbers each week isn’t as bad as I thought. So for what didn’t work, some things they put are didn’t budget enough for particular categories. And this one comes up a lot in the first few attempts to create a budget because you’re not used to it. So if this happens to you, no worries. I didn’t look at my actual income and based budget on my previous income. This is a situation where my client had gotten a raise, but didn’t factor in the raise when creating the next month’s budget. Felt overwhelmed and didn’t look at the budget. Went over budget in problem categories. And often those are categories for different clients as restaurant and ordering food. So that was a few clients’ sections on what didn’t work. And then here’s what they said they would do differently. So where not budgeting enough to certain categories was what didn’t work. They said they’ll budget X dollar amount for the categories they didn’t budget enough for right. So I budgeted this amount. It was too low. So next time I’m going to budget this higher amount. For the client who didn’t look at the actual income and based on previous income, they said review actual income for the month and budget accordingly. For the client who felt overwhelmed and didn’t look at the budget, what they’ll do differently is explore why I felt overwhelmed by the budget. And then this is something that I coached her on. And then finally for the clients who went over budget in their problem categories, what they’d do differently, it was something in the realm of creating a plan for how to stay under budget in the problem area. And a great thing here for one client, this whole area was going out to eat. And so he decided to divide up his budget for going out to eat and decide how much he was gonna spend per week and then keep track that way it’s been working really well for him. So as you can see, with each of these, the client has a tangible action plan for how to move forward to avoid the things that didn’t work and get themselves back on track. That is how you keep improving end results month after month. My clients are hitting goals way faster than they ever thought possible, in part because they’re implementing this process. This could be you. We’re heading into a new year and there’s never been a better time to get serious about achieving all your money goals. You’re ready and when we work together, you’ll start seeing results faster than you thought possible, too. So if you know I’m talking to you head to rhothomas.com slash call to schedule a call so that you can learn more. Alright, so that’s it for this week’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media I most often on LinkedIn and Instagram. My handle on Instagram is at I am rho Thomas. Subscribe to the show and leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening on. Both of those things help more people to find the show. And if you’re so inclined, please share the show with a friend. As we close out friend I pray that you will take the time to review and evaluate your year and your efforts to achieve your goals. I pray that you will use this evaluation process to make more progress than you ever thought possible in 2022. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control your time, build wealth and live the life freedom choice you deserve. Happy New Year. Talk to you later.