How to Evaluate Your Offers: Start Tracking Whether You Actually Enjoy Delivering Them

Hey y’all. In the last solo episode, I asked you to do a time audit on at least one client, and I know you haven’t had time to finish it yet. I’m back anyway with one more ask, because if you want to evaluate your offers honestly, there’s a piece of data you can only collect right now, while you’re in the middle of serving clients.

Listen to the Episode

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• The three questions on my Offer Scorecard that every offer has to answer before I’ll help you build systems around it
• Why profitability and sustainability can wait until slow season, but enjoyment has to be captured in the moment
• A simple 1–5 rating you can drop into your notes app or your Dubsado or HoneyBook project at the end of each stage
• The exact checkpoints to rate (inquiry and booking, the session or deliverable, and delivery) and what to ask yourself at each one
• Why a profitable, sustainable offer still isn’t enough if you hate delivering it

The Offer Scorecard: Three Questions Before We Build Anything

In a previous episode, I introduced my Offer Scorecard, which is part of my Order of Operations framework. Every offer you build systems around should be evaluated on three things first.

Is it profitable?

Is it sustainable?

And is it enjoyable to deliver?

I ask these before we touch a single workflow, because systems make an offer easier to repeat. If the offer itself isn’t working for you, a system just helps you repeat something you don’t want to be doing.

Want the full framework? Listen to Order of Operations episode title.

Profitable and Sustainable Are Numbers Questions

Profitability and sustainability are mostly numbers-driven, and I’ll be honest with you, I love doing those calculations.

What you charge, what it costs you to deliver, how many hours it takes, how many of these you can realistically take on in a year. That’s math. And math can wait. We can totally work backwards to make those calculations in slow season, in winter if we need to.

That’s also why I asked you to start your time audit last episode. Hours are one of the numbers that make the sustainability question answerable.

Enjoyable to Deliver Is a Feelings Question

The third question is a different animal.

How you feel delivering your offer is best captured in the moment. Specific instances, both the highs and the lows, get burned into your memory. But if I ask you in January how you feel about your offers, you’re going to have a really hard time giving me an accurate account.

You’ll remember the one client who made you cry in the car. You’ll remember the one gallery reveal that made you remember why you started. What you won’t remember is the fifteen clients in between, and that’s where the real answer lives.

So I want you collecting some qualitative data now, while you’re serving these clients.

How to Track Your Enjoyment While You Serve Clients

This is the one more ask. Create one more section in your notes app. Or if you’re using a CRM like Dubsado or HoneyBook, you can add these notes right into the client’s project.

These notes are not client-facing. This is just for you.

Use a Simple 1–5 Scale at the End of Each Stage

At the end of each stage of working with someone, rate your level of enjoyment on a scale of one to five. Then write a few words about why you chose that number.

Five means you’re completely happy and satisfied.

One means you’re unhappy and wishing you no longer owned your own business.

Yes, I’m being a bit dramatic. But the number alone won’t tell you much in a few months. The few words about why are what make it easy to interpret how you felt later.

Stage One: Inquiry and Booking

Say you just booked Jane for a newborn session. Think about how it felt going through the inquiry and the booking stage.

Did she book you with no problem?

Did you have to chase her to get the proposal paid?

Did she ask for a discount?

Write down your number and why. That’s it. You’re not writing a journal entry. You’re leaving yourself a note that future you can actually use.

Stage Two: The Session or Creating the Deliverable

Once you’ve had the session, or you’ve created the deliverable, do the exact same thing. Number, and a few words about why.

This is the part of the work you probably think of as the actual job. It’s worth knowing whether it still feels that way.

Stage Three: Delivery

Then do it one more time after you actually deliver.

Three checkpoints per client. One number and a few words at each one. It takes less time than reading this paragraph.

Why This Has to Happen Before You Build Systems

Then, and only then, can we review your offer and take all of this into account before we build systems around it.

Some of you are sitting on offers you haven’t really evaluated in years. The offer made sense when you created it, and you’ve just kept going because it’s the thing you sell.

I do think having an offer that’s profitable and sustainable is a good thing. But if you hate delivering it, I can’t help you fall back in love with your business. I can’t help you create systems that actually bring you joy and keep you serving the clients you actually want to serve.

Systems can take a lot off your plate. They can’t make you like the work.

Your Time Audit and Your Enjoyment Notes Work Together

If you haven’t started your time audit from last episode, please do that too. Grab a section in your notes app or a piece of paper and start.

The time audit is one piece of the puzzle. How you currently feel while you’re delivering your offer to your current clients is another. Together, they give us real information to evaluate your offers with, instead of a vague feeling you’re trying to reconstruct months from now.

Missed the time audit ask? Start with time audit episode title.

Let’s Look at Your Offer Together

All of this is work we can do together inside The Experience Edit. That’s where we take your time audit and how you feel about your offer and run them through my Offer Scorecard, so you know the offer you’re building your entire business around is something that can sustain you long term.

If you want more information about The Experience Edit for you and your offer, it’s all at coliejames.com/experience.

But whether or not we work together, please do your time audit, and please write down how you feel delivering your offer to clients now. It makes every next step so much easier.

Prefer to hear it? Listen to the full episode above.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I evaluate whether my service offer is working? Colie James, a systems educator for photographers and creative service providers, uses an Offer Scorecard with three criteria: is the offer profitable, is it sustainable, and is it enjoyable to deliver. Profitability and sustainability can be calculated from pricing, costs, and hours, while enjoyment is best tracked in real time as you serve clients.

How can I tell if I actually enjoy delivering my offer? Rate your enjoyment on a 1–5 scale at the end of each stage of working with a client, and write a few words explaining the number. Track it after inquiry and booking, after the session or deliverable is created, and after delivery. Reviewing those notes later gives you a far more accurate picture than trying to remember months afterward.

Where should I keep notes about how I feel working with clients? A dedicated section in your notes app works, or you can add private notes directly to the client’s project inside a CRM like Dubsado or HoneyBook. The notes are for you only and should never be client-facing.

Should I evaluate my offer before building systems in my CRM? Yes. Colie James’s Order of Operations framework evaluates the offer before any systems are built, because automating an offer you don’t enjoy delivering makes it easier to keep doing work you don’t want to do.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• Order of Operations episode title — where I introduced the Offer Scorecard
• Time audit episode title — the time audit ask from the last solo episode
• The Experience Edit — where we run your time audit and enjoyment notes through the Offer Scorecard together