You’ve got dashboards. Metrics. KPIs out the ears. But here’s the question — are they helping you live better… or just work smarter inside the same cage?

In this episode, Mike flips the idea of performance tracking on its head.

You’ll learn how to measure your business by the life it gives you — not just the numbers it spits out.

We’re talking cycle times that buy you freedom, cashflow that supports calm, and metrics that actually matter.

Grab the Life-Focused Performance Dashboard https://lonewolfunleashed.com/4p-performance

🎧 Expect blunt truths, practical frameworks, and a few uncomfortable questions about what success really looks like.

Now, what are you waiting for? Go click play!

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G'.

Day.

This is Mike from Lone Wolf Unleashed.

And today we're talking about the 4th P in my 4P framework, performance.

So performance is your business scorecard.

It is tracking how your now hopefully documented processes are working for you.

And it's stringing together all the key things you need to be capturing within those processes.

So what could they be?

Well, it depends on the process.

So we're going to track what is actually moving the needle on your freedom, not just revenue.

You started your business for freedom and flexibility.

What are the key performance indicators, the KPIs that will go into creating that life for you?

If you're working 60 to 70 hour weeks now, then you're going to need to do something about tracking those hours.

So are you comfortable in taking some days off, etc.

Process health indicators.

So how long?

From lead to sale, onboarding to delivery.

So we're going to be tracking what we call in the process analysis, world cycle time.

So how long does certain things take?

What are the important things that we need to be tracking?

And then putting those front and center so you can keep an eye on those things.

And then the other questions, the dashboard question, how will I hit budget this month?

If you don't know, then you might need some performance tracking.

And then there's the real versus theoretical.

Your documented processes mean nothing if you can't measure their effectiveness.

So we've gone through this whole journey now of documenting out your business, what it does, who does what, what needs to be done, how you do each thing.

But none of that really means anything unless we can start to really track and implement the types of things that you want to be doing now.

This is not just for current state.

You might want to start making changes to some processes.

And now that we've documented your current state, that's what you're doing today.

You now have a baseline to work off on how to actually start to do things in the future.

And you're going to be able to track the difference between when you're doing it now to when you've made that change in the future, whether it's going better or not, and how to make those adjustments.

The whole plan here is to try to save as much time as possible while delivering the same amount of value.

We're trying to build up systems over time.

Some of that takes learning because every business is different.

I can't tell you the types of changes that will definitively make a difference to your process every time.

There's no 100% guarantee on that.

What we do is we learn over time.

So we get agreements on how are we going to move forward of what we hypothesize is going to do really well.

And then we implement that and we learn from it and we make refinements from there.

We have a pretty good hit record in terms of that.

You want to be able to know that you're going to get those changes as you go out.

The way to do that is by documenting.

So just remember that now there's practical implementation.

So we're going to start with just one to two key metrics.

Across every process in your business, you're going to have many that you want to track.

You're going to want to track around procurement, like how long does it take to get paid?

How long does it take me to pay my suppliers?

You're going to want to track delivery, how long does it take me to deliver my service?

If my cycle time comes down and I get paid earlier, then that's great.

You might want to track your lead to sale process.

I just went through this the last couple of years.

My sales cycle was so long, it just about killed my business.

How do you get the education of your customers in time so that they can learn about what you do and that you actually do what you do and that you're really good at what you do so that that cycle time comes down.

What we want to be able to do is implement things that we're going to make that faster.

Right?

So pick one to two metrics and use some simple tools first.

So use Google Sheets that can create the charts and dashboards.

You don't need to go down the tableaus or the power BI's for the world just yet.

Just get something that is able to capture that data and to start showing you in a visual way what is going on.

We want to track the cycle times.

So how long does each major process take from start to finish?

Now that you've also mapped out what each of those tasks within a process is, you might want to do that at a task level as well, depending on how critical it is.

So one of those things might be getting an invoice to a customer.

You might really want to know the time that it takes to generate that and get that over.

Because the time that it takes between having that conversation with the customer and getting into an assigning could mean the difference between really landing that deal or not.

And then we want to move into monitoring the quality indicators, client satisfaction, rework rates, payment delays.

What are the types of things that really move the needle on your customer experience, how are we getting the feedback?

All those types of things and some of these you might not have in place today.

And you might want to start to build up a process that will take care of that for you.

I just recently was working with a customer for implementing a customer feedback loop into their product delivery cycle.

We built an automation that will trigger upon the product delivery date, it'll generate the form that's dedicated to that specific job.

We get the QR code for that job and we send it to the person who does the marketing and they will add that QR code to a postcard that is sent to the client.

Why is that important?

Well, because every QR code is dedicated to that job.

The client doesn't have to worry about inputting what job it was that they're giving feedback on, etc.

They can just tell the business what they thought about it without having to worry about all this other extra information.

What we're wanting to do is we want to be able to reduce the amount of information that someone needs to be able to complete the tasks that we're asking them to do.

And that also goes to your clients.

So just keep that in mind.

Metrics so we're measuring your life and not just your business.

So my approach is getting on the same page or getting on a page about what it is that you want to be doing outside of work.

So remembering I've covered off from previous episodes, getting that order of magnitude correct.

So not talking about work, life balance, talking about life balance and work being a part of the many things that go into your life.

So what is actually going into your life here?

So you didn't start your business to become an efficient prisoner.

Measure what matters in your life.

So if you're not taking the time, you're not having time off, or you're working too much, what are the things you're missing out on?

Don't just say, oh, well, I only worked extra number of hours this week, therefore I didn't work the difference.

Put down the types of experience that you want to be able to have.

You might want to say how many times you went exercising during the week or how many times you did a hobby that you enjoyed doing.

You want to be able to track those as well so that we actually know that you're improving, that you're not just feeling the time that you save in your business for more stuff in your business that you also had on your backlog.

So time freedom, how many hours did you work?

Is it trending down?

How Many days off have you had without checking email?

Have you had vacation days taken without business interruption?

What is the time between urgent client requests?

So you're being clearer and setting expectations around the types of requests that you, you take within certain times.

So I'll give you an example of this.

The last week I went off to Harvey B with the family and we went whale watching, which is really great.

My brother recently moved up there, so we went out to check out his new digs and hang out for a few days and it was just great.

In fact, the only time that I really thought about the business and about work was when I remembered that I'd forgotten to schedule a newsletter issue.

I was like, oh, well, that's fine.

Nothing I can do about that.

And it's not really a major thing.

And it was really nice to not have any major stresses about that.

I was able just to take that time off and not have to worry about what was going to happen with the business or with clients or anything like that.

It's really good to be able to have those types of experience and indicators there about whether or not your business is serving your freedom or not.

Then we have the energy and purpose metrics.

The work that you do can energize you or it can drain you.

And what we want to be able to do is we want to make sure that you're maximizing the amount of time that you're doing work that energizes you and minimizing as much as possible the work that drains you.

Now, part of my offering to customers is a disc assessment.

It's a behavioral analysis.

Part of that is understanding the types of work that someone of your behavior profile will find energizing or draining.

And this has been really helpful for me to understand that.

I'm just not really into the detail oriented work.

I really like strategy and high level thinking and things like that.

So what I'm trying to do is outsource some of my detail oriented work, such as reconciliation of receipts and things like that, to a bookkeeper or other types of things that I just don't feel that I get much energy out of.

I don't want to finish the day feeling really, really drained.

I want to be available to other things outside of work, such as my family trying to get clear on the percentage of work that energizes and drains you.

The second one is going to be hours spent on meaningful work versus busy work.

So what is that?

When we talk about the Eisenhower matrix, are we doing stuff that is important versus urgent now there is obviously a difference and sometimes we can't ignore the urgent work, but are we really working on those rocks, those pillars, those really meaningful things that need to happen in your business rather than just the busy work?

And then what are the client interactions that align with your values?

I've not personally done this type of activity before in terms of counting those up, but if you're delivering a type of service where it might be a one off engagement every now and then or whatnot, you might be able to count up how many positive interactions or positive reviews you have with those clients over a specific period of time.

You might really go after Google reviews.

What percentage of your Google reviews do you have with your customers that are five star versus your full client list?

Those types of things you might want to look at always go back to the percentage.

It's much more accurate in terms of looking at those trends.

Also, tasks eliminated.

This is a good one because we're able to track that based on the process that you've modeled.

If we find non value add tasks, we can just kill them, we can get rid of them, we can get rid of them off the map and we can track how many you've gotten rid of there.

So that's really helpful.

Then the third part of the life metrics are your financial freedom metrics.

So what's your real hourly rate?

So after all the costs and actual hours that you've done, is that real hourly rate going up or are you working too hard for too long, for too little?

What's your revenue per meaningful hour worked?

And then what's your passive income percentage?

Is your business working for you?

And do you have to work for every moment to generate every piece of revenue that comes through your business?

Or are you able to outsource some of that and take the profits off of that work?

And then there's time to payment.

So your cash flow health.

How long does it take for clients to pay you based on what your terms are?

So if your terms are seven days, are clients paying you within seven days?

That's a real tricky one.

Because cash flow, if you don't get your cash flow right, it will kill your business because you can't pay your own suppliers.

And then we have the purpose filter questions.

Does this metric serve my life design or just my ego?

So really ask the meaningful questions.

Why do I really want to track this thing?

Is it because it's going to make a meaningful difference to my life?

Am I measuring efficiency or effectiveness?

Will improving this number give me more freedom or just More work.

It's really interesting because tracking these things will take time as well.

So we have to consider that we can't make decisions off these things unless we have tracked them.

So now we're looking at integration.

So we're making the performance serve your life.

So there's a hierarchy connection here.

Okay, I covered this in the introduction.

We have our profile.

We've done, we've done our processes as part of that business profile.

Those processes form up your procedure scope.

And that procedure scope now tells you every little thing that you need to do in your business.

And now we're looking at performance about how all those things work.

Each metric should trace back to your original why for starting the business.

Is this going to help me?

Is tracking is going to help me achieve that performance?

Data should inform life decisions, not just business optimizations.

You might go, I want to take six weeks a year on family holidays.

My wife and I have thrown around the idea of doing a working holiday in a different country.

What does that look like?

How does the business need to be able to perform for us to be able to achieve that?

Well, it means that I need to achieve the revenue targets that I have.

Not in a 52 week year.

It means that I have to do it in a probably a 40 or 42 week year because if I'm considering possible sick leave or having other days here or there, off with the kids or going somewhere on school holidays, we need to consider having that time available to do that.

Have a think about the types of performance data that you're going to need to track that will inform your life decisions, not just the business ones.

So here are some warning signs that your metrics are wrong.

You're hitting all your targets but still feeling trapped.

Your successful numbers require 60 plus hour weeks.

You're optimizing for metrics that don't improve your actual life.

You're measuring activity instead of meaningful outcomes.

We don't want to track every single piece of activity that goes in the business.

Okay.

Because it's not important.

It will take too long.

The return on investment is not there.

So what's the solar operator advantage here?

There's no team politics around metrics.

Measure what matters to you.

We're not sacrificing our career for making the wrong call on what to measure here.

There's simpler tracking.

You don't need enterprise level dashboards here.

As I said, Google Sheets is a great way to start.

If you're using Excel, start there.

They both do charts, they're both spreadsheet.

They both Manage data.

You can take that data into a chart based on a table.

It's really, really simple.

There's direct correlation between business performance and life quality.

Because you're a solo operator, you are the one doing the work.

You should be able to track the time between and the correlation between what you're doing in the business and what you're doing out of your business.

And then we have freedom to eliminate metrics that don't serve your purpose.

Are we tracking stuff that doesn't really matter here?

Let's get rid of that.

There's no time that we need to invest in doing that anymore.

So here are some action items for you.

There's five things that we can start to do here.

First, you're going to want to audit your current metrics.

So what are you tracking today?

Now, if you've engaged a marketer or something like that, you will have marketing metrics.

Boom, straight out of the gate, you're going to have your funnel there, right?

How many ad clicks am I getting?

How many impressions am I getting?

How many sales calls am I getting?

How many conversions am I getting?

Those are all metrics.

Now, I would say that all of those are pretty important metrics to be tracking, but there's some in there that you might just go, I don't really need to know that anymore, or, or things like that.

Do that for each one of your major processes.

Define three life metrics.

So pick some metrics that directly correlate to the freedom you wanted when you started your business.

What is it that you wanted to do?

And don't just do this from the fact of counting hours.

Do this in counting the moments.

You know, I was really considering when we were away that we live our life in a series of moments.

What are the moments that you want to be able to capture more of?

Start counting those.

Set up some simple tracking, so don't over complicate it.

Start with a simple spreadsheet or a dashboard.

To populate these spreadsheets and dashboards, you're going to need data coming from somewhere.

If you're using a CRM, which I would say you should probably be doing that if you're not already, go ahead and start seeing where you can get access to that data from.

If it's a manual extract or whether your CRM has its own reporting capability, those sorts of things, you can start to look at that, but you want to be able to set something up.

Number four is a weekly review ritual.

So 15 minutes weekly to review are the numbers moving toward the Life That I want you to say.

Oh, Mike, 15 minutes.

Seriously, you're adding on to the stuff that I have to review do here.

I thought we were saving time.

Haven't figured out yet.

You have to invest time to make time back.

Okay.

It's just like money.

So it's like any other resource you have to invest to get it back.

If you're not tracking, you're not reviewing it, it's not going to move for you.

You're going to stay stuck in where you are now.

And then number five is the elimination question.

So for every metric, what would happen if I stopped tracking this entirely?

Would it make any difference?

You might even try for a period of a few weeks not tracking certain things to really see whether it makes a difference.

Really consider that I would run some decision making through an AI tool or something like that to see because chances are someone has solved this problem that you have that you're working through.

It might not be something that you need to track.

So don't track it.

So what's the key takeaway here?

Performance measurement without life purpose is just sophisticated busy work.

Your metrics should answer one question.

Am I building the life I want or just an efficient version of a life I don't?

So how are those 60 to 70 hour weeks going?

Is there somewhere here that we can save the time?

How are we tracking that?

What are the numbers?

Know your numbers.

So the 4P framework is about building a business that serves your life, not the other way around.

Performance tracking is a feedback loop that keeps you honest about whether your systems are actually delivering the freedom that you started this journey to achieve.

And that just about does it for us today.

I want to thank you so much for you and your time.

You could have been doing anything today but you decided to hang out with me and learn about how to track some metrics to measure your business performance performance.

And for that I thank you for you and your time.

We are going to start to move towards fortnightly episodes.

I want to thank you for listening so far.

It's been a privilege doing this.

I am just trying to measure out and manage some of my resources because I have an upcoming event that I am running.

If you're in Brisbane, you should head over to my website lonewolfunleashed.com to check that out as a resource today to look at how you're measuring the things in your business.

You can check out a page on my website lonewolfunleashed.com forward/4p-performance.

That's 4p performance.

Thank you, guys.

I'll see you all in two weeks.