In this solo episode, Yvonne McCoy brings her nearly 30 years of entrepreneurial expertise to share a powerful quarterly clarity check-in designed to help business owners and professionals finish the year strong. She introduces her simple but effective "Strategic Steps" framework—Stop, Think, Evaluate, Proceed, Succeed—to assess where you are, clarify your focus, and amplify results. Yvonne explores the importance of doubling down on what works, celebrating incremental wins, and leveraging sprints for productivity. She also discusses current trends in coaching and business, including the need for flexible offerings, actionable coaching sessions, and fostering community among clients. The episode is packed with practical tips, mindset shifts, and the encouragement needed to keep moving forward, one small change at a time.

Chapters:

00:00 Maximize Podcast Impact Efficiently

05:35 "Focus, Evaluate, Optimize"

07:14 "Prioritize and Measure Your Energy"

10:31 Step-by-Step Success Strategy

13:58 "Think Big, Plan Strategically"

17:15 Flexible Short-Term Engagements

21:43 "Subscribe, Engage, Innovate, Persist"

24:00 Embrace Change, Stay Curious

Quote:

"Clarity comes from getting rid of the fuzzy stuff, you know, and not adding more stuff. Clarity can be a real accelerator."

Link:

bookacallwithyvonne.com

Welcome to the One Small Change. I am thrilled, as always,

that you're taking time to embark on this journey of exploration and

transformation. And I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30

years of entrepreneurial experience and a passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change.

And I'm so glad that you're here with me. And this is my

special quarterly clarity check in.

Because it's important that we take a look

at our business on a regular basis. It doesn't have to be a

quarterly one, but we are at the beginning of

the last quarter and there's lots going on that I need to talk to you

about. So one of the things that I want to share with you

is my strategic steps. It's a model

for getting things done, and it's really easy. It

stands for Stop, Think,

Evaluate, Proceed, and Succeed.

And so I'm going to tell you how this applies to

this last quarter. So the first thing is stop

what's working well and why? Because so often the

first thing we do is look at what we think is wrong.

And it's really important to come from a place of strength and what's working.

So you want to identify what you've done so far this year that's been

successful and why, because that is

where you are going to have more success quickly. And I want to talk to

you about the rule of three. So if you take the things that

have been successful, can you use them in three different ways?

Can you, let's say you have a podcast,

so you've got your podcast that's successful.

What is it that you can do with the guests that are on the podcast

to continue that success? How else can you use the

podcast? So one of the things that I try to do and haven't been able

to do much lately is take

the podcast episode. If I'm listing something in my newsletter

or somebody's event, put their podcast episode there along

with what their events so people get to know more about them. So find three

ways to use everything that you're doing, and it's going to

accelerate your growth. Clear out the cutter

clutter, stop all the draining projects that you're doing, things that

you know are not really serving you.

You know, that could be taking, you know,

ending some of the services that you have that

every time it pops up, you're going, oh, my God, I can't believe I haven't

done anything with this yet. You know, So a big shift is

realizing that when you're, when you're stopping, you're only

pausing. You're not really quitting. You're choosing to invest your energy more

wisely and assess. And again, I will say

focus on you. Focus on what's working well, what,

what you do well. Right. Double down on

proven strategies. And that's when clarity shows up.

Clarity comes from getting rid

of the fuzzy stuff, you know, and not adding more stuff.

Clarity can be a real accelerator. So the next one

is think how would you like it ideally to be? A lot of times we

don't, especially when we're looking short term, we don't

look at what we need to go through

to get to the long term result that we want. So one of the first

things I want you to say is when we're in this last quarter,

I want you to think beyond December. I want you to think

about what is it going to look at by the end of January.

Because I think that puts you in a totally different time

frame and a process, right? So you're like,

okay, by the time I get to the end of December, I'm,

you know, I'm thinking I just want to have the biggest, you know,

increase my revenue as much as possible. But by the time I get to the

end of January, I actually want to have a new program that I

can launch so that you're actually working on it

as you go through the end of the year and, and putting in down the

seeds that you need to so that that's actually going to work. So one of

the things that I like to use when I'm trying to get a lot done

in a short amount of time is I like to have sprints.

Now I typically do a 21 day sprint. So a 21

day sprint, if you do it continuously

through the last quarter actually gives you like four mini months. And the way that

I came up with 21 days is typically we are really

focused the first week and the last week and we kind of lose momentum in

week two and three. But if you are only doing three

weeks, you've got a first week, a middle week and a last

week. So you don't have time to lose focus, but you cannot

live this way. So if you're going to do some 21 day focus,

you know, sprints, you're only going to want to do two or three of them

before now and the end of the year. But sprints can be different

lengths too. You can have really short sprints, like a four day

sprint where you're really focused on something that you're going to do, or you could

have a 10 day sprint. I think the secret to a sprint

is not having the same time frame that you're used to. So

typically you don't want to have a seven day or a 14 day

sprint because those are time frames that we're used to.

So I would say to you, make sure that you do at least one

sprint during between now and the

end of the year, and at least two between now and

the end of January. One of the things that you

can do is when you do sprints, it's really going

to make you focus on what you do, which means you're going to have even

more clarity. And so you're going to see that you're going to

move a whole lot faster. The next thing

is evaluate. So part of what you want to do while you're

evaluating is look at what you prioritize and what you

focus on. So again, we're going back to that question of

what's working? Where did I see results? Where did

I waste my energy? Where did I spend more

money than I wanted? Where did I bring in money? So one of

the things that you can do is ask yourself some

of these questions. Where did I see the most results

this year and can I duplicate them this

quarter? What's it costing me in

money but not giving me a return on my investment? So

again, we talked about subscriptions. If you have subscriptions that you're

paying for, you're not using, get rid of them,

right? Where are you wasting your energy?

How many times have you showed up for things and it wasn't quite

right? So maybe you don't drop it all together. Maybe you say,

I really like this networking group, but I'm only going to go

twice a month instead of every week, right? So you want to

look at how much you know your return on investment is not

just money, it is also what you're

spending in energy,

creativity. So if you're in a situation

and it seems like you're giving, giving, giving and not getting

anything back, that's draining you, right? Not that

it isn't good to give, but your energy has

a lot to do with what you can accomplish. So you want

to check when you're looking at your resources,

you want to look at money, you want to look at time, you want to

look at relationships, you want to look at your health, you want to

look at all these things because you are a single

person and you have a business and you have a personal life.

So the question is, where do I want to

focus my energy in this next four months?

So That I can have the outcome that I

want. All right? And so

the other part that sometimes people don't look at is you

can't grow if you can't measure it.

Right? And that tends to. To go

against our grain sometimes, especially if we are heart centered.

But the thing is, we all have

processes. We all have

places where you can have benchmarks and numbers that you can look at.

I enter, you know, I did 7:1 on ones,

right? Of the 7:1 on ones, I only converted one.

Okay. But earlier I only did 4:1

on ones and I converted two. So what's the difference?

Right? If you hadn't looked at the numbers, you wouldn't be

aware that there was a difference or how big that that difference

was. So evaluating is really important. And

you do that along with your intuition, not instead

of, you know, you need both of them.

Okay, so the next one is proceed,

plan your actions. All right? What are the things that

are going to give you the biggest results?

So the first thing you want to do again is focus. Pick one or two

strategies that work and double down. One of the

strategies that you can use is what

collaborations and partnerships have you been

successful with? See if you can do more of that, because you

can multiply your reach and your revenue in

collaborations. And don't forget to reconnect with past

clients or people that you did outreach with, because

sometimes they've already, you know, thought

about it, they've been mulling it over. They're much

more likely to convert faster than somebody that you've met

new. So you want to build collaborations in your

plan. You want to partner with others, right? You want to

reconnect with your clients and your network, but you

also want to be proactive, right? Very

rarely have I ever had a plan that worked exactly

as I wanted it to. So one of the

things you want to do is what one of my coaches said is you want

to practice the fryer drill before the fire. And what that

means is you say, okay, this is my plan. I'm going to do step

one, and I'm expecting this to happen with step

one. What if that doesn't happen?

What's the next thing that I'm going to do? Or you take a look and

you say, why didn't it happen? Right? And you can

fix your step one before you even get going. And you

want to do that all along the way because, you know, you

need to know, for instance, how much resource, how much time,

that kind of thing in your plan. So kind of, you know, be

your own best you know, person to,

you know, devil's advocate and see if you can work out the bugs

before you get started. And know, if something doesn't work, what's the

next thing that you're going to do? All right,

so the thing that's really important is

not to confuse activity with progress. You want to

proceed with intensity. And, you know,

you want to make sure that you're keeping the question, what is the purpose

of this? In your mind so that you're always looking

to see whether or not in fact, you're getting to that purpose.

Right? The last step is

succeed, celebrate and repeat your

success. Right? Now, when I say succeed, it doesn't mean

that you necessarily got to the end of your goal. It

means that

you've made progress, you've moved the

needle, that you're getting closer. And sometimes we forget that. And

I am really bad at this, I have to say, because I will do

something. You know, I did my first

summit. It was amazing. My speakers were amazing.

And yet afterwards, it was like, oh, I should have done this, or I should

have done this, or we could have done this, or I, you know, don't second

guess yourself. Enjoy the moment, because

it's what will help you do it again and move on.

And again, you want to look at what am I doing that's going to

carry over into the next year and give me more than one benefit,

right? The rule of three. So you want to

celebrate your wins, the big and small, acknowledge what you do so

you can repeat it. You want to reset,

you want to carry the momentum forward. Don't stop with

December. Keep going so that you're ready to launch whatever you know,

your best year that, you know, 2026 is going to be your

best year. But, but here's the thing. With this, with this system,

it doesn't have to be just at a quarter. It's easy enough to, to,

to go through that. You can use it on a regular basis. You

could actually start every day off with this. Because one of the things that I

know is the first two steps in this

stop and think are probably the two

steps that will change everything. All right? We

tend to evaluate, we tend to come up with a plan,

right? So those steps are pretty much ingrained in us. But

just stopping to say what's working

totally shifts everything, because that is not the way we are brought

up. That is not the way we're trained. I mean, when

I'm dealing with teams and management, one of the first things I say

is, do you ever talk to the people on your team and tell them

something good that they're doing without it being that sandwich. You

did this good, but you need to fix this and hope you'll do better in

the future, right? You did a good job on this. You

know, I appreciate you and that's it, right?

There's no, you gotta fix this, right? So if

you can think about what's working well and why

that will change whatever system and get you better results with

whatever system you're already using, then think about

how ideally you want it to be. Sometimes we constrain

ourselves and we won't let ourselves think big,

right? But if you say, okay, ideally

I would like to have this, I would like to have a hundred

people sign up for my workshop, right?

Then you start to see what possibilities and you start to

see how you have to plan accordingly based on that.

And then again, the last step, which is celebrate your success,

right? We tend to not do that and that kind of makes us cycle and

go back. But I have given you a system,

a strategic system. And so the question is,

what did you learn that's different? So if I

were to highlight a couple of things, I would say

don't plan for just the end of the year, plan

for the beginning of next year so that you are going to hit the

ground running, right? I would

say ask yourself what the purpose

is as you're thinking about how would it be ideally.

And, and you know, this is where a coach can be really,

really, really helpful. And it, this

is why I value my coach. Because I have a tendency and

coaches over the year, I have a tendency to come up with a big

side. And you know, and

it just is exciting the way that it is. It feels good. And then you

go, what is the purpose? Oh, okay. So

yeah, the purpose is I want to sign up more

people because I want them to be able to work with me.

But I want this price point, right?

And you know, my coach said to me,

so sounds like a great idea. But at the price point that you're talking,

this is not something you can start next week. You need

much more of a lead in for this. What is something

else? If the purpose is to get more people to sign up to work with

you, what is something else that you can do? And that

something else is what I said to you. Go back and see the people

who you contacted before who are already in your network

and see if there's something that has changed for them or make them

so that they're closer aware. So thinking about what it

ideally looks like can really be a

big thing and help you.

All right, so let's talk about some of the other challenges that are

coming up. So I want to talk just a little bit about what I think

are trends that I'm seeing. One of the

trends that I'm seeing is people

are not. People are concerned. There's a lot of

uncertainty out there. And so as you're looking at things,

what can you do to make people feel more

comfortable? So people are not looking for year long commitments

right now, from what I can tell them. And so

the question is, do you have several ways that people can start working with

you? Do you have one piece that is kind of an acceleration

piece that is short like four weeks

and maybe a two week course, Something that they can do at a price

that they feel comfortable with, that they can get going?

So that's something for you to, to think about. That piece then

rolls into a longer piece, then rolls into a longer

piece and that looks like something that is very easy

to do. The other thing that I see happening

is people don't people want to

implement stuff with you, they want to walk away with

stuff that's done. And one of the things that I've started doing with my

clients is carving out a few minutes

in the coaching session to actually work on whatever

it is they need to do. So if we

talk about them setting up a workshop,

I will, we will stop working. You know, we'll

take five minutes and I go, go on your calendar, find out when that's going

to be. And so it's done. So when you leave that

coaching session, you know what the name of, you know, we've worked out

what the name of that workshop is going to be. We've worked out when

the first one is going to be. We've worked out,

you know, maybe who your partners are going to be. So you've got a

plan that's already in action. And I'm finding

people are moving so much faster because otherwise our

tendency is you leave with things to

do and then you don't think about it again until

it's a day or so before you're talking to your coach or talking to your

person again. This way you've got it in action and you can move

to the next step. So people are moving a lot

faster. All right, so that's another trend that I'm

seeing. The other trend is

people are looking for connection.

And by that I mean, you know, community.

They're looking for a place where they can share things with other people.

And so one of the things that, that I think is so important is

if you're, even if you're doing individual coaching, you may

want to have a group call once a month so that other

people that are in your coaching program have a chance to share. Now,

again, that depends on, you know, who you're coaching and that kind of thing.

But if not that, you probably should recommend that your

clients be involved in a community where they can

have other people, they can talk to, places where they

can be the expert and the student

and, and leave with a lot of good information. So those are

three trends that I'm seeing. So with that in mind,

I want to share what I've done that's a little

bit different. So I probably put, we'll put some notes

where a community that you can join at the end

and you can always book a call and

we can talk about your situation more. So I want to talk about what I've

done since probably the last clarity thing that

I, that I talked to you about. So my thing is

I am taking Pilates now and

I am finding it really amazing. It is the one

place that I can go and shut my brain down. And so when I do

it, I come out and I'm totally refreshed and, and I feel

amazing because of it. So I just want to say

to everybody, it doesn't matter how old you are, how big you

are, there are lots of things that you can do that will

make you feel better, that will help you with

the way that you feel and, you know, that are kind of

exciting. And it, you know, I have to say, it isn't always pretty when

I do it, but I definitely feel

better for, for it. So I want to

make sure I do the commercial right. So make

sure that you subscribe, you share, you engage

with on social media about the podcast.

And the reason that I do it again is partially for community,

that I want to be able to introduce you to people that you may not

have met and to ideas that are helpful, fuel your, you know,

your, your quest for growth and impact. And I hope

that you will join me again for the one small change and

see what things we can do

that will make our world have a bolder

vision and more innovative possibilities.

And so if I were to say

something. Last words, One of my favorite

mantras, I have a couple, but one of my favorite mantras is

it doesn't matter how many times you fall down, it only matters how many times

you get up and how fast. And this came about

from when I was losing weight and you know, it's

kind of like if you say, I'll start again next month or next year,

you know, it's going to take you forever. But if you can start right away,

if you realize what's going on and. And

see that you can

keep going in the direction that you want to, you don't have to. You don't

have to be sidetracked. I think it makes all the difference in the world.

And so this is a really important time to take that lesson

seriously, because as you look at what you're doing,

right, and you pick the things that are working, it's going to

get you there faster, right? They may be

small things, but two or three things that work will give you

exponential results that you're not expecting. And

my last couple of things I want to say to you is if

you're not a numbers person, it's a good time to start thinking

about it so that you can really see where in the process

things are not working. So you have comparisons. It's not a

judgment, right? It's not a judgment

that it's. I only had so many people at my workshop,

right? It's like this time I had nine people, but I made two

sales. This time I had 20 people, and I made no sales.

So that it's about taking a look at the puzzle pieces and

seeing what makes which pieces work.

All right? So on that note, I'm going to say

goodbye and say to you, remember, change

isn't always simple. You know, it

may seem like that, but it may. It's not always easy. It

requires resilience and courage and a willingness to step out of

your comfort zone. If you never step out of your comfort zone, then you're

always doing the same thing. So I hope you will join me again

next week when we embark on this journey again. And until then,

please stay curious. Bye.