I’m the kind of person who climbs a mountain, and after catching my breath, I eye the next summit to be peaked. There’s a reason why I spent 20 years with the word “optimization” as part of my job title. I think it can be summed up by the 4-H motto that I pledged to uphold once a month from ages 8 – 14: “To Make the Best Better.” It goes with that “Achiever” Enneagram 3.
Over the past decade, I’ve attempted to teach myself to appreciate all of the hard work I’ve put in, to pause for longer than the time it takes to catch my breath, to look back and appreciate the several mountains I’ve summitted prior to this point. This is not an easy task for me.
I noticed it this morning while I was journaling. I’ve recently completed a home repair project that has been nagging me for weeks. I’m glad it’s done. And the instant it was checked off the list, my brain started to notice things that haven’t bothered me one iota up til this moment. I was disgruntled and journaling about this constant mental optimization, when I realized something kind of silly. I need a performance review.
Being self-employed, it never occurred to me to put on my manager hat and give myself a performance review. But I realized it was a needed step. After all, I’ve used those annual reviews as an opportunity to take stock of my achievements for my years in corporate life. I usually update my resume and linked in when I do them. It’s quite overdue!
Conceptualizing a Self-Performance Evaluation
If you, like me, have grown up in corporate environments, you’re used to there already being a system in place for this sort of thing. There’s a form to fill out. A rubric aligned with mission, vision, and the standards set out for all employees. This morning, I spent about 30 minutes trying to find one. I decided to use my stated goals (I have a ton of posts on here for quarterly goal check-ins, and I’m due for the Q2 review next week), my personal values, and a mishmash of other sources of material for this review. I think as a template, I’m going to use a SWOT analysis to begin with.
Strengths
I do what I say I’m going to do. I launched the Patreon in April/May 2024. As my 212 posts attest, I’ve followed my posting schedule. I missed one date (it came out a week late) and one item was below my personal standards of quality. That’s still above average performance! I taught 16 classes (18 if you count the Burnout ones), and have 7-10 more in planning stages for later in the year. I consistently get positive feedback for my classes, and have a large number of repeat students.
I’ve been steadily working toward the North Star of seeing my book in the wild. I have two traditional publishing contracts underway, three self-published titles at some phase in production, and I continue to move forward with work on other projects, submissions of short stories, and book concepts. I did get to 10K people across my social media platforms, which looks good on book proposals. And I presented at 3 conferences, which also beefs up academic credentials.
Weaknesses
The only class I got negative reviews for was a class with too few students that my intuition told me to cancel, and I did it anyway. I should not have gone forward with that class. The students were disappointed, and so was I. It was too much stress for too little reward.
When I’m early in the process of a thing (self-publishing, on-demand classes) I tend to over-invest cash, which is then nearly impossible to recoup. This is partially because of the unrealistic optimism of the beginner, and partially because resources that help teach you how to do things generally only point toward the solutions that cost money. As I gain experience and information, I see how to reduce costs from my lessons learned.
Opportunities
I officially launched my coaching work last fall, and I still think it’s the biggest potential area for growth. I know that coaching as a business is contracting right now in general, but I do still believe this is a place I can carve out for myself. I haven’t put as much effort and time into marketing it as I’d intended to. I hope to ramp this up in the next review cycle.
A few months ago, I had an idea for an oracle deck of cards – a clarifier deck to sit alongside the Tarot. I created bare bones prototypes and sent them to patrons for feedback. Now, I am in the process of creating the art for what I hope to be 56 cards. I don’t know if this is something I’ll try to trad publish or if I’ll try to self-publish it instead, but I’m chipping away steadily at it, and the cards are coming out really interesting and cool. I’m collaging cut up photos onto painted surfaces, and I’m enjoying honoring my photography in this way.
While I like teaching at Morbid Anatomy and I love the community there, I am interested in diversifying my teaching venues to reach wider audiences. I’ve done mild investigation of other areas that offer online classes in a similar format, but I would like to increase that research a bit and see what else is out there. This would better enable me to reuse classes I’ve already developed, and to teach on topics that may appeal to different audiences.
I did try teaching a webinar on my own, and it went pretty well. I’m going to reuse that footage for a YouTube post eventually. Speaking of which, I do still feel like my YouTube channel has untapped potential. Monetizing it would be great, but I’m not banking on that. But I do think it’s a possible way to reach more people that I’m not fully taking advantage of.
Threats
Many of the threats to my business model are tied to the choices and actions of the current administration. I have to watch for news about the ACA, about student loans, and about taxes for the self-employed.
I also need to get to the point where my income is greater than my expenses, which is challenging since coaching, classes, and books all require everyone else in the economy to have disposable income. I have a few dates and inflection points where I’m reviewing these things.
My physical health is also a potential threat. I’ve lost at least a day per week for several months now on driving and doctor appointments. Most of them are low-worry, like allergy shots, but some of them do include some stress and concern. I’m okay, but I’m definitely getting a lot of homework from the universe this year.
Mission / Vision Alignment
One of the things I did last year was bucket my expenses and budget according to my personal values. It was interesting to analyze whether my spending habits were in alignment with the things I think are the most important to be and embody.
I think it’s also interesting to think about the past year’s work in this vein. Was my actual work in alignment? I have evaluated and identified my values a number of times over the past twenty years, so here’s my current list:
- Balance
- Beauty
- Curiosity
- Compassion
- Growth
- Optimism
- Safety
Right now, I’m working the most on Balance. I’m trying to find a way to do what I need to do, without running myself ragged. It’s been a challenge for most of the year, but I think I’m getting there.
If anything I over-indexed on Curiosity, Growth, and Optimism. (Read: This lady needs to stop buying so many books.) I think my efforts and energy spent toward Safety was just about right.
I think I under-did Beauty and Compassion. I’m going to need to do some volunteering this year. And go to more museums.
Overall Performance Rating
If I were my manager, I’d give me an “exceeds expectations” then have to apologize that I can’t get a pay increase.
As I think about my next review period, I’d like to see me listen more to my intuition, to get ahead on posts like blogs, youtube, and patreon, so I can take more vacations and days off, and to give myself stricter launch budgets for new endeavors that I tend to “throw money at.” I recommend doubling down on the things that work (doing podcast guest spots has been cool!) and stopping work on the things that don’t seem to pay off in terms of money or energy (like the burnout training).