Hello and welcome to the Kaz Johnson Show, my name is Kaz Johnson and I am your host today, this is episode 96 and today I am talking about measuring and testing.

There is a saying that, if You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It. Management thinker Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Drucker means that you can’t know whether or not you are successful unless success is defined and tracked.

When I was teaching we were taught to deliver a lesson, then to evaluate what went well, what did not go so well and what we could do better next time. – Great lesson for me, and I always do that not.

When I was taking my marketing qualifications we were taught to plan, action and evaluate, then plan again, in a round circle. Another great lesson that I always adhere to, however sometimes we are so busy wanting to move onto the next exciting project, we feel that looking back is a waste of time and effort.

Nothing could be further from the truth, in fact, it’s the complete opposite. By measuring and testing nearly everything we do, will save you time, blood, sweat, tears, and money.

So what are some of the things I measure and when I measure it?

Let’s look at some of my routines. I do a 90-day review that is set out against my 90-day goals. I tend to plan in 90 days and take a holiday every 90 days. I take my break first so that I am clear-headed and then spend a whole day looking back on how my actions planned out against my goals. This falls against my ‘what went well, what didn’t go so well, and why, and what will I do better next time’

Then there is the weekly review, this is more of a look back on the week, and I look at things that were on my goals for the week. And again, this falls back against the ‘what went well, what didn’t go so well, and why, and what will I do better next time’. Now by seeing if there was a common thread here, for example, I did not exercise, and yes exercise is one of my core must do’s if I am going to run a successful business, because if I am sick, I have bitterly learned that this has a massive impact on my business, so, it could be that I didn’t exercise for a reason, or in most of my cases, my excuses that I was using not to go to my pilates class. By keeping a weekly review, I can measure the why’s and change them into a must!

These reviews are the core of what I measure, it is so easy to get off of track for something so easy, but if we are not tracking them, we can’t improve upon them.

I could easily get off track if I don’t stick to my core set of reviews. Sometimes I have had to change a time that I am exercising because I used to exercise first thing in the morning, but go so excited about what I was working on, that I made my excuse and skipped my early morning walk. I now schedule my exercise for noon as this is when I have done most of my creative work, it’s out of my head now and feel ready to take time out of my work. This simple one change came about from me keeping weekly and 90-day reviews. It has been a game-changer for being because my main push goal was to exercise daily as my health was number 1 priority for me. Without my health I had nothing.

Let’s look at what else I measure. Each day I check my stats, from how many people checking with my blog and where they came from, how many email subscriber I have gained or lost. I changed from sending out updates on an as and when basis, to a weekly email digest, I now have less unsubscribes, more opens and more clicks. I listened to feedback from people who unsubscribed and changed things up a bit. Now my subscribers can scan the digest to see what is important to them and I save myself time by only sending out one newsletter each Tuesday.

I check my newsletter stats, the opens, and in particular the clicks, what it was that people are interested in. It’s all such useful information that helps me move forward in my online business.

Other things I look at is my interaction on social media, what posts gets likes, so I can do more of this types of post, what does not get any likes, so I don’t bother to do any more of that particular post, and so and forth.

The is a myriad of things that you can measure, but just make sure that you do make the time to put it into your routines and do it on a regular basis, it sure will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Thank you for joining me this week.

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