why you need to assign value to your habits and routines

The Health Growth Letters is a weekly publication of tips, frameworks, and lessons to help you build a more balanced life based on faith, health, and wellness. If you’ve been forwarded this email you can subscribe here.

What’s on the agenda:

• Verse: asking for help

• Lesson: that what gets measured gets managed

A verse I’m thinking about

The purpose of this verse in Matthew is to encourage us to seek God - even if we don’t know Him, or are unsure he exists.

It’s a promise that if we truly, and sincerely, pray and ask God to reveal His presence in our lives and care for us He will do so.

But I want to take a step back and talk about this related to “asking for help”.

Asking for help

We often hesitate to ask for help.

Maybe it’s out of pride, fear of burdening others, or the belief that we should figure things out alone, but the truth is asking for help is a strength, not a weakness. It speeds up progress, deepens connections, and brings fresh insights we wouldn’t get on our own.

I say this because I truly feel like most people who feel stuck or like they can't get ahead have never genuinely asked for help.

I want to encourage you to 1) ask God for help, I truly believe He answers these prayers and 2) ask others for help and support.

People are far more willing to help than we think, and getting over the hurdle of asking may be the one thing keeping you from moving forward.

A lesson I’ve learned:
That what gets measured gets managed

Building a map for success

I enjoy writing these weekly letters, and I hope you enjoy reading them, but my expertise is growth strategy - particularly with early to mid-stage direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands.

One of my primary job responsibilities is forecasting.

I am responsible for creating an accurate monthly forecast (± 10% is my KPI). The ultimate goal is to predict profit and growth, but part of that is predicting revenue, ad spend, and efficiency.

The secret to a good forecast is details. 

In my forecast, every dollar of revenue is accounted for through a particular, campaign, creative, ad, channel, campaign, or flow.

It’s the only way to identify where we might be “off-target”

We outline this in what we call a “Growth Map”.

Why most people hate forecasts

There are two reasons. First, they are time-consuming. Second, forecasts are always - and I mean always - wrong.

The secret to a good model is specificity. When you create a forecast or a model and don’t break out expectations around the different factors, they aren’t very useful.

But…

If you detail expectations for every action, you can quickly identify where you’ve made an error and make a correction.

As a growth strategist, we build this in something we call a “growth map”

Let’s walk through a quick example.

Breaking down a growth map:

Let’s use the example of Lifecycle marketing.

Lifecycle marketing is essentially the email and SMS messages brands send to you, and they are typically broken down into two buckets:

• Automated flows

• Campaigns

Automated flows: are preset automation that leads you through a series of messages based on your initial action.

Campaigns: are the emails you get from brands you’ve subscribed to with their product highlights, new releases, and sale announcements to keep themselves top of mind and incentivize timely purchases.

Each month when I forecast lifecycle revenue for a brand, I build assumptions around each flow first. Those flows are typically:

• Abandon website

• Abandon cart

• Abandon checkout

• Post Purchase

Then, I assign a daily revenue target for each which builds to a monthly baseline revenue target.

It would look something like this:

This baseline is what would occur even if you didn’t run any additional campaigns.

From there, I look at how much additional revenue I need to drive to hit my growth goals and recommend a number of campaigns to close the gap.

It would look something like this:

Sorry it’s a little small, but you should be able to see that revenue is “mapped out” against specific actions.

• Flow revenue that makes up the base

• Campaigns are added with expectations of revenue to close the gap

• Total projected revenue matches target revenue

Together, this makes a growth map, or plan for us to track progress and growth against.

A growth map for personal growth

I used the example of lifecycle marketing because it has very relatable categories to our daily lives.

In daily life, we have our flows, they just look like routines and habits. We also have campaigns, which manifest as the events and activities we will our calendars with.

What we don’t typically think about is the ROI (return on investment) of each of these.

We just… “live”.

I put live in quote because I would do the same thing looking for a brand to try and grow by just pumping Facebook ads and sending some random emails each month.

It’s not really “growth marketing” it’s just… guessing.

Our live are busy, and there are a million things you could do, the last thing you want to be is unsure if all the things you’re doing are valuable or not.

Maximize your return by assigning Growth Value

We are a week away from April, and what I want to ask you to do is map out the value of your habits, routines, and events for the month - or at least think about them.

Here are the steps:

1. Take your daily habits & routines and list them out

2. Assign a value or “revenue” to each of them (what do they offer you)

3. Identify the gaps between the growth you want & your default growth rate

4. Fill the gap by improving your routines & habits or adding extra “campaigns”

Step 1: Look at your daily habits & routines

We all have habits and routines, even if we don’t realize it.

You might say “I’m not a morning person, I don’t have a morning routine”, but that is your morning routine! It’s just non-existent or minimal in value

Here are some common routines:

1. Morning routine

2. Work commute

3. Lunch habits

4. Workout Routine

5. Relational routines

6. Evening rhythm

7. Bedtime routine

Some might have value, and others might have room to be optimized.

Step 2: Take a close look at those routines & habits

Using myself as an example, if I look at my “flows”, I can’t chart a lot of revenue to my morning routine. It’s pretty lackluster - but, I can assign a lot of value to my workout regimen.

It’s important to understand what flows, habits & routines, in your life produce value.

Step 3: Identify the gaps

Once you’ve identified the value you’re getting from your habits - or said differently - how you’re pacing towards your growth goals, you can identify gaps.

Gaps are the space between what will happen naturally, and what you want to achieve.

Identifying those gaps creates a framework, or value system, for adding additional vaue to your life.

Step 4: Fill the gaps with campaigns (events & actions out of the norm)

This is nothing wrong with falling short here. In fact, if a brand told me they were good with retention revenue based on their flows, I wouldn’t work with them.

We need to add activity to our lives.

Identify what areas you want to grow in this next month, maybe it’s fitness, diet, or relationships. If you’ve identified a gap in your normal habits & routines - optimize a flow, or add an event!

Example:

Let’s say I’m trying to get ready for a race in the middle of April (which I am), my normal routine is to work 4-5x a week and eat relatively healthy. But this month I want to be extra prepared. Maybe I schedule an extra workout each week or schedule Friday night plans at home instead of going out somewhere and eating our drinking.

There’s value in measurement

This could be a timely exercise, and maybe you don’t want to go through it - that’s OK.

The purpose of this letter is to help you:

1. Recognize everything you do has an ROI

2. Understand if your current “flows” are driving the growth you want

3. Think about the value of events and actions before adding them.

There is a famous quote that says "What gets measured gets done". I truly believe that.

Measuring the value of your actions is a surefire way to ensure you make the most of them!