Success Metrics Review
Update your success measures as your values and responsibilities evolve
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
The Success Metrics Review is a periodic audit of how you define and measure achievement. First, inventory the indicators currently driving your behavior, such as revenue, profit, awards, recognition, or milestones. Next, rank them and test whether they still align with your present values, goals, and responsibilities. Remove measures that have lost their meaning instead of pursuing them from habit. Finally, add dimensions that are now important but absent, such as family time, retirement funding, charitable impact, vacation, or purpose-driven work. The revised scorecard gives broader ambitions operational weight and prevents yesterday's definition of success from controlling today's decisions. Repeating the review keeps direction relevant as life and business evolve.
Origin
Jasmine Star developed the review after motherhood broadened her definition of success beyond rapid business scaling to include being present with her daughter.
Core principles
- 01Success metrics should reflect current values rather than an outdated identity.
- 02External achievements are only one possible dimension of success.
- 03Removing obsolete metrics protects direction and purpose.
- 04New responsibilities may require broader measures rather than smaller ambitions.
- 05Meaningful metrics connect values with everyday choices.
How to run it
- 1
Inventory current metrics
Write down everything you presently use to decide whether you are successful. Include formal business KPIs and informal status markers that influence your choices.
Pro tip Look at calendars, dashboards, goals, and recurring worries to uncover hidden metrics.
Watch out Do not list only the metrics you think you should value.
- 2
Rank their importance
Number the metrics according to how important they are to you now. This reveals conflicts between stated priorities and the measures receiving the most attention.
Watch out Ranking every metric as equally important avoids the necessary trade-offs.
- 3
Assess present relevance
Test each measure against your current values, goals, and responsibilities. Ask whether achieving it would still feel meaningfully successful.
Pro tip Imagine achieving the metric at the expense of your top priorities.
Watch out Do not retain a metric solely because it impressed you in an earlier season.
- 4
Remove obsolete measures
Cross out indicators that no longer represent success. Stop allowing outdated recognition or vanity goals to direct resources and attention.
Watch out Separate obsolete status measures from essential business health indicators.
- 5
Add missing dimensions
Add concrete measures for newly important areas such as family time, savings, property, education, generosity, rest, or meaningful impact. Make each dimension observable enough to influence decisions.
Pro tip Choose a small set of metrics you can realistically review together.
Watch out Too many new measures can produce a scorecard that is impossible to use.
- 6
Schedule the next review
Revisit the scorecard after major transitions or at a regular planning interval. Update it whenever values, responsibilities, or strategic direction materially change.
Pro tip Pair the review with an annual or quarterly planning session.
In the wild
A founder previously measured success through revenue, profit, and month-over-month growth. After becoming a parent, the founder adds protected family time and presence as core measures while retaining business performance indicators.
→ The business can continue growing without allowing financial performance to erase an important parental commitment.
An entrepreneur once viewed magazine coverage as proof of success. After attention shifted and the coverage stopped contributing meaningfully to current goals, the entrepreneur removes it and adds retirement funding, vacation time, and charitable giving.
→ Effort shifts from obsolete recognition toward outcomes that reflect current priorities.
Common mistakes
Confusing expansion with reduced ambition
Adding family, purpose, or impact metrics does not require abandoning business growth. The goal is a more complete definition, not automatic downsizing.
Preserving prestige metrics by habit
A measure can remain emotionally attractive after it loses strategic or personal relevance. Test its present value rather than its historical status.
Using values that cannot guide action
Abstract priorities should be translated into observable measures, or they will lose every trade-off against concrete financial metrics.
Is it for you?
Best for
Entrepreneurs and professionals whose responsibilities, values, or definition of a good life have changed.
Not ideal for
It is not a replacement for mandatory operational metrics needed to keep a business solvent, compliant, or accountable.
From the transcript
“There's a framework I want to share with you called the Success Metrics Review.”
“So first you're going to evaluate your current metrics.”
“The third step and that's to add new metrics.”
From the episode
5 Years, 500 Episodes: What Growth Really Looks Like