🎧 The Motivated CEO: Business Strategy for Entrepreneurs is streaming on all platforms. Listen here. Also streaming on YouTube.
Mastering Business Growth: Leveraging Data and KPIs for Success
The Power of Data and Numbers in Business
Many new entrepreneurs shy away from data or feel paralyzed when they’re asked about tracking their numbers. Yet, data isn't just for those who love spreadsheets and charts. It's your business’s GPS, directing you towards your goals and recalculating when you're off track. You don’t need to have a degree in mathematics; you simply need to get curious about your numbers and what they could be telling you.
For example, my own background is in healthcare, not business. What helped me scale multiple businesses was my ability to understand and use data. Objective data allowed me to set a baseline, create goals, and take action, constantly reassessing what was working and what wasn’t.
Start with the End in Mind: Do Your Offers Support Your Goals?
Before you even get to the nitty-gritty of tracking KPIs, first make sure your offers align with your business goals. Let's consider a common goal: reaching $100,000 in annual revenue. Whether that figure reflects your take-home pay or total profit, knowing the specifics helps reverse-engineer your path.
For instance, if your offer is a $10 membership, you’ll need to sell 10,000 memberships to make $100,000. In contrast, if you have a high-ticket item priced at $10,000, you only need to sell ten units. Both approaches are valid but require different strategies. Ensure that your offers are set up realistically to meet your financial objectives.
Track Your Clients' Origins: Where Are They Coming From?
The simplest yet immensely impactful data you can gather is understanding where your clients are coming from. In today's saturated market, social media has become the go-to strategy for many. But, is it truly yielding the results you need?
Often, social media serves more as a nurturing tool rather than a primary source of client acquisition. Instead, many business owners find that word-of-mouth and referrals are their most potent sources. So, ask your clients directly where they found you. Include this on your client intake forms to build a repository of data automatically. Focus on doubling down on what works and phasing out what doesn’t.
Email Metrics: Understanding Open Rates and Content Engagement
Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools for business growth. But not all emails are created equal. Tracking your email open rates and the content that garners engagement can provide invaluable insights.
For example, I used to send out weekly podcast recaps that I believed added value. Yet, the data told a different story; these were my lowest-opened emails. By tweaking my approach based on this data, I now work smarter, using time and resources more efficiently.
Don’t Fall for Vanity Metrics: Quality Over Quantity
In the age of online marketing, it's easy to get swept up by vanity metrics like follower counts or the notion that you need to exponentially grow your email list. However, having thousands of non-engaged followers or subscribers is far less valuable than a smaller, highly engaged audience. Your data should guide you to focus on serving your current clients massively well rather than constantly seeking "more."
Embracing the Unsexy Side: Data is Key
You might not hear this often in glamorous marketing campaigns, but the true separator between successful and struggling businesses often comes down to the effective use of data. As the business landscape continues to evolve, particularly with new regulations affecting how testimonials can be used, solid data interpretation will be more crucial than ever.
Conclusion: Ready to Dive Deeper?
If you're eager to explore these concepts further and develop your skills in leveraging data for business improvement, connect with me on Instagram. Drop me a message with "Heard the Podcast, I'm In," and let's start a dialogue about how we can tailor these strategies to your specific needs. Remember, someone out there needs the solution you provide. By mastering the art of data, you'll ensure your business not only survives but thrives. Here’s to making the money you want and creating the impact you desire!
Episode Links
🎙️DID YOU LOVE THIS EPISODE?
Check out these episodes packed with even more strategies to help you shatter your sales plateau!
❌ Don't buy my Bestselling Book, The CEO Method: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Success because I want to give you a FREE copy. Click here!
🙋♀️ Ask me anything! I know you have a burning business question you would love to ask. Submit your question here for a chance to have it answered on a future episode.
Transcript for Episode 375. Not a Numbers Person? You Don’t Need to Be!
Amy [00:00:02]:
If you've been in my world for any length of time, you know, I am all about the numbers, all about the data. And I will tell you what, by far the number one thing that I see over and over and over is this. When I ask a new client, are you tracking your data? Are you looking at your numbers? Are you filling in those KPIs they get? The deer in the headlights look like they're in big trouble. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, wait. It's okay. Even if you're not a numbers person, we can learn how to strategically and intentionally start to look at this information because that's all data is. You don't have to be a numbers person. You don't have to have a math degree.
Amy [00:00:54]:
You don't have to have taken college level calculus to learn how to leverage data to grow your business. Full disclosure, I only went through pre calc in high school. I still remember my senior year, they asked me, they're like, hey, would you like to take calculus your senior year? And I'm like, but do I have enough math credits to graduate? And they're like, yes. I'm like, no, no. I hated math. Absolutely hated math. But when I was building multiple businesses from the ground up and I was able to scale them so quickly, I took the opportunity to get curious and ask myself, well, wait a minute, I don't have a business degree. How am I achieving this level of success? You know, the imposter syndrome starts to kick in all of the things.
Amy [00:01:47]:
But what I realized was I was utilizing data. And that's what I did my entire career in healthcare, was take that objective data and analyze that baseline, create a goal and then take action along the way, gathering that data and reassessing, reassessing what's working and what's not working. Because data is nothing more than our gps, right? It is our destination. It is going to guide us to that destination that we want to get to by analyzing where we are now and where we want to be. It's that little annoying voice that you know when you're driving around a city and she starts going, recalculating, recalculating. You're like, I'm on a one way road and I can't do a U turn right now because it's illegal. So just. Yeah.
Amy [00:02:45]:
Have you ever been there? Gosh, it drives me crazy. But this is what your data is doing for you. It's helping you recalculate along the way. So in this episode, I really want to break down where to start, where do you start with tracking these KPIs, even if you're not a numbers person? And some of the things that I advise business owners on are not complicated, they're not super fancy. I was actually on a networking call recently and the woman was like, what platform do you use? And I'm like, well, it just depends on the business. And honestly, the simpler the better. For most business owners, Google sheets work just fine because simple is sustainable. If you try and go in and start tracking every metric under the sun, you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to get frustrated and you're just going to throw in the towel and not look at it.
Amy [00:03:44]:
And that's what we don't want. I don't want you to start to resent your numbers. But remember, you're running a business and we need this data to guide us, to recalculate us when we're on the wrong track. So the very first thing I want you to look at, even before we get into the nitty gritty of it, is do your offers support your goals? We've talked about this in past episodes, really being intentional and taking that zoomed out approach. You should have an overall goal for your business. Okay, this year. And we'll just use 100k for simplicity's sake. That seems to be the gold standard.
Amy [00:04:26]:
Even though in my mind it's bs, like it's what you want, what do you actually want? But for simplicity's sake, let's go with that 100k that we see all over the place. So say Your goal is $100,000. Is that what you want? Your take home pay to be, or is that just the total profit? All right, $100,000. That will give me a lot of money. You know, I can pay my taxes, I can reinvest some of it, and then I can pay myself as well. What is that hundred thousand dollars? So once you have clarity as to what is that goal, I want you to take a look at your offer suite. Do your offer support your goals? Because if you're running a $10 membership, how many of those are you going to need to sell in order to hit your goal? You need to have that clear objective. Likewise, if you're selling a high ticket item, if you have a $10,000 offer, you only need to sell 10 of those for the year.
Amy [00:05:34]:
Both take different approaches to achieve. Can it be done? Absolutely. But you need to make sure your offers realistically are supporting your goals in a way that is sustainable to you. So before you Start tracking anything. Take that zoomed out look and see if this is actually feasible. See what it will take to reach that goal. Because so often we get in our heads and we're like, nothing's working. But the reality is you don't really need to sell as much as you think to hit your goal, but you have to have that clear picture so you can reverse engineer that goal.
Amy [00:06:16]:
So once you've determined, yes, my offers support my goals, the first thing that you can track that is so easy, that will give you so much information. It's just crazy that everyone's not doing this is where are your clients coming from? What is your leading client acquisition source? Let's face it, social media has been shoved down our throats, right? Because it's free, everybody's doing it. It's a great ego boost if you have hundreds of thousands of followers, like, oh, look, I'm insta famous, okay, but are those followers paying your bills? I know you've heard that before and I know it can be a harsh reality, but at the end of the day, is that where your clients are actually coming in from? If it is, awesome, keep doing you on there. But so often what I'm finding is that social media, it's a piece of the puzzle. It's more of a nurture tactic in the noisy world we're living in. It's not really as much for discoverability as it once used to be. In fact, going viral can really actually kill your engagement rate, which is a whole nother topic for another day. But when you take the time to figure out, where are your current clients finding you? Where are your favorite clients finding you? Where are those leads coming in from with those clients they love, love, love to work with you that are your raving fans.
Amy [00:07:54]:
And if your answer is, I don't know, guess what? You can ask them. It's okay to ask. I used to be such a, like, in my head type of person. You know, we create these stories. We're afraid to ask because, oh, we don't want to be a bother, but it's okay, just ask, be brave. Build that muscle up. It gets easier. I swear it does, because I have been there.
Amy [00:08:17]:
But what a lot of times we find out is that many entrepreneurs, especially service providers, solopreneurs in the online space, we're getting these amazing clients through word of mouth, through referrals, not through social media. So lay yourself off the hook and take a deep breath. Because it's okay if social media isn't your entire marketing strategy, because it shouldn't be. You're building your business on borrowed land at that point because your account can get hacked, it can get shut down at any time. I even have two factor authentication turned on and someone still managed to get access to one of my accounts. It's just mind boggling. Could you imagine if these people use their brain power for good? Oh my gosh, I think we'd have all of the world's problems solved by tomorrow. But really get curious.
Amy [00:09:22]:
Get curious and leverage that objective data to see what is actually working again. Because that ego's getting in our way. You know, word of mouth and referrals, sometimes it's a slower burn. It's not an instant gratific. You don't know who's talking about you and recommending you behind your back. But so I don't even have to ask anymore. I just put on my client intake sheet, makes it easy. And that way I can just auto populate the data into a spreadsheet and it shows me exactly where everyone is coming from and I can break it down and get all sorts of juicy details from it.
Amy [00:09:59]:
But take the time to figure out where are those clients coming in from and double down there. You don't need to be everywhere. Focus on what's working and do less of what's not. I know, it's so simple. It is so simple, yet we don't do it. We don't do it often enough. So here is your reminder. And then my third recommendation for you is look at your email open rates, what subject lines, what content is getting opened? What are people, when you write those emails out, what are people actually replying back? And be like, oh my gosh, this was awesome.
Amy [00:10:48]:
Because that will give you more data, do more of that. I used to send out a weekly podcast recap which I thought was really valuable. I really thought it was benefiting my audience. Like, hey, here's all these, yes, freebies. Here's what we talked about this week. But then I looked at my data and I'm like, you know what? That's actually some of the lowest opened email that I have. So why am I. And it was very time consuming to spend on creating these emails, putting in all the images, this, that and the other, and I even have people helping me, but just to compile the data, to have them to do that and the information to give to them so they could do their job.
Amy [00:11:29]:
It was time consuming. So I looked at it and I got curious and I said, okay, well how can I improve this? And I changed up my approach. So now I'm actually working smarter instead of harder. And this little piece of information has saved me so much time and so much money because I intentionally took the time to leverage that data because it's not about what I want. It's about best serving my clients. We often forget that because we think we need to do the things because so and so says it. We need to do this, we need to do that. Okay, but what's working for you in this season of business right now? And that's where a lot of the advice that some of these major gurus in the online space really have lost touch with reality.
Amy [00:12:26]:
I saw an ad last week on Instagram, grow your email list by 10,000 subscribers. Okay, what I started thinking is immediately, are these aligned subscribers? Are they bots? Are they actual, like, ideal clients? We don't need more. We don't always need more. It's an ego thing. Let's massively serve those that are already there. Stop worrying about more, stop worrying about what everyone else is doing, and do what's working for you. And this is why data is key. Because this is the missing piece.
Amy [00:13:08]:
This is the missing piece you are not going to find in any mastermind, with any mentor, with any course that you see online. No, it's the data. It's the not so sexy part of running a business, but will set you apart, especially as the market shifts. As we saw in 2024, going into 2025, big changes are happening, especially here in the United States with all the new regulations that went into effect with the FTC and how you share your testimonials, we are going to see a massive shift. And you know what? I am so here for it. Because data is what's going to lead you to success. That's what's going to set you apart from everyone else out there, because you see what's working for you. I am so excited right now.
Amy [00:14:07]:
I am in the process of creating something new just for you. And if you are interested and want a sneak peek as to what it is and how we can really dive into the data, into the numbers, and teach you how to strategically create systems that work for you, teach you how to get into topics like this and really analyze that nitty gritty, even if you're a numbers person, I want you to hop on over to Instagram and drop me a message and just say, hey, I'm interested. Heard the podcast. I'm in. No commitment, no contracts. Like, nothing weird. Don't worry, I'm not going to be like, oh, let's get on a sales call. No, that's.
Amy [00:14:54]:
We don't do that over here. So if you are interested, be sure to let me know. Drop into my DMs, because I am here and I am so ready to start helping more entrepreneurs leverage that data. Because you have so much awesome potential. You have the solution. Seriously, somebody needs you right now, and you have the solution to the problem that they have. So let's get out there, let's get you seen, and let's grow that business so you can make an impact. I am here cheering for you.
Amy [00:15:34]:
And until next time, cheers to making the money you want so you can create the impact you desire.
Comments