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Shatter Your Sales Plateau: Leveraging Clarity and Metrics for Business Success
The Reality of Business Guesswork
Clarity Over Guessing
One prevalent issue in many businesses is the lack of clarity. Without clear insights into what’s working and what isn’t, business owners are essentially throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping something sticks. This scattered approach leads to wasted time and energy—and more often than not, inconsistent results. Amy emphasizes the importance of moving away from guesswork and towards a strategy driven by clarity. Once you achieve clarity, you can focus your efforts more intentionally and effectively on what truly drives growth.
The Cost of Scattered Efforts
Time and Energy as Valuable Resources
Often, the lack of clear direction results in significant wasted resources. Think about the countless hours spent on tasks—creating content, running promotions, launching offers—that don’t yield the desired results. This not only drains your time but also your mental energy. Amy calls this the “mind drama” and “decision fatigue” that comes from continuously operating in reactive mode, constantly wondering, “What am I doing wrong? What should I try next?” This exhaustion inhibits sustainable growth and leads to burnout.
Metrics: Your Business’s North Star
Tracking for Growth
At the core of gaining clarity is understanding and leveraging metrics. Metrics serve as the North Star for your business, guiding you towards informed decisions with precision. Amy shares an illustrative example from her work with a client who spent countless hours on Instagram, believing that increasing visibility through social media content was the key to sales. However, upon examining her metrics, it was evident that most of her sales came from her email list—not social media. By pivoting her focus to nurturing and expanding her email list, her sales skyrocketed, and she regained valuable time each week.
Overcoming the Fear of Metrics
Simple Yet Effective Tracking Solutions
One hurdle that many business owners face is the fear of metrics. Often perceived as overwhelming or overly complicated, tracking data can indeed seem daunting. However, Amy insists that metrics can be simple. You don’t need complicated tools or fancy spreadsheets. Effective tracking can be as simple as using a Google Sheet or even a notebook. The key is to find a solution that works for you and fits seamlessly into your workflow.
How to Get Started
Step-by-Step Approach to Tracking Metrics
To embark on your journey towards using metrics for business growth, here’s a three-step approach inspired by Amy's advice:
Identify Key Metrics
Start by identifying a single metric that, if tracked, would make a difference in your business. Whether it’s sales, engagement, or leads, pick one area you want to improve and focus on the metrics tied to that goal. For instance, to increase sales, you might track conversion rates or average order value.
Create a Simple Tracking System
Once you’ve identified your key metrics, establish a simple tracking system. Whether it’s a Google Sheet or a notebook, begin recording your data and tracking changes over time. Look for patterns and trends that indicate what’s working and what isn’t.
Leverage Your Data
Use the metrics you’ve gathered to make informed decisions. This data isn’t there to judge or criticize you—it’s a mirror reflecting the current state of your business. By analyzing trends and making data-driven decisions, you can adjust your strategies to focus on what works and stop wasting time on what doesn’t.
Conclusion: The Power of Clarity and Metrics
Embrace Intentional Focus
In conclusion, consistent growth isn’t about hustling harder—it’s about clarity, intention, and focus. By abandoning guesswork and leveraging metrics, you can make smarter decisions that drive sustainable success. Start simple: identify, create, and leverage. As Amy passionately encourages, once you start tracking, you’ll be amazed at how you ever ran your business without it. Embrace your metrics, crush your sales plateau, and watch your business soar.
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Transcript for Episode 389. Hustle is Holding You Back
Amy [00:00:02]:
Do you feel like you're hustling every single day on this hamster wheel of life and business that just doesn't end? Showing up on social media, creating offers, sending emails, doing your client work, but it just feels like you've hit a wall. If that resonates with you, you are not alone. And the problem isn't how hard your you're actually working, because you're working your tail off. It's more of what you're working on. And in today's episode, I want to dive into why your hard work isn't paying off, but even more importantly, what you can do about it. So let's start with the reality about guesswork in your business. And it all comes back to one thing, and this is something I talk about all the time. It's clarity.
Amy [00:00:58]:
When you don't have clarity as to what's working and what's not, it's essentially, again, that proverbial throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. But at the end of the day, because you're guessing, you're not growing. And this scattered effort, all of these things that you're doing, because you've lost focus, because you've lost intention as to why. Why am I doing what I'm doing? These scattered efforts have led to scattered and inconsistent results. And that guessing wastes two of your most valuable resources, your time and your energy. Now, I want you to think about how many hours you've spent creating content, running promotions, or launching offers that were silent and didn't lead to sales. Now, what if you could get that time back? You can. You can get that time back.
Amy [00:02:06]:
Because what this is doing, this lack of clarity, it's creating so much mind drama and mental fatigue. You're stuck in that, like, decision fatigue where you're having to make so many little decisions over and over and over. You're constantly wondering, like, what am I doing wrong? What should I try next? Doing all of these things. You're in reactive mode, and it's exhausting. And it's no wonder so many solopreneurs like you feel burnt out and exhausted because we're constantly running, running, running. But the truth is, you can't grow a sustainable business if you're just making decisions in that reactive mode based on feelings, based off of assumptions. You need facts. And that's where metrics come in.
Amy [00:02:57]:
Because at the end of the day, you cannot grow what you don't measure. Metrics are your business's North Star. They are your gps. They tell you exactly where you are, where you're going and the best route to get you there. So let me give you an example. I was working with a client the other day and she was spending hours every single week on Instagram creating content because she was told you need to post reels in order to gain more visibility. Visibility is going to fix everything. Okay, I get it.
Amy [00:03:34]:
You do need eyeballs on your service, on your products in order to generate sales. But we can look at your metrics. And when we looked at her metrics, we discovered that most, most of her sales weren't actually coming from social media. They were coming from her email list. So what we did is we just tweaked her strategy a little bit to plug that hole, plug that gap in her funnel so that we drove traffic not from visibility on Instagram, but more. So, okay, how can we show up and pull people off of that platform and onto your email list? Because all, obviously you're really good at messaging if people are buying what you're selling from your email list. So when we shifted her focus to growing and nurturing her email audience, her sales started to skyrocket and she got hours of her week back because now she wasn't focused on creating endless content for social media. It was more.
Amy [00:04:35]:
So how can we get them off of that platform onto a list that we own? Because that's what converts these metrics give you clarity. They show you in plain old black and white what's working so that you can double down on those strategies. And they also show you what's not. So you can stop wasting time or find the opportunities in those strategies in a way that is simple and sustainable. But what ends up happening is when people hear metrics, they are thinking things like, okay, I, I don't do numbers. It's just too complicated. I don't have time for it. But they don't have to be complicated.
Amy [00:05:22]:
And actually simple is sustainable. You don't need fancy spreadsheets, you don't need tracking tools. You know, it's interesting, I find that whenever I talk to someone about metrics, they're like, oh, what, what CRMs are you using? What systems are you using? Well, for me, in my business, I keep it crazy simple. I still, five years and three businesses later, I still use Google sheets. I auto populate my data via a zap into a Google sheet. It runs a formula for me and that is what I use. That is how my brain works. And that's what works for me.
Amy [00:06:01]:
This is all about discovering what systems work best for you, knowing how you work and creating a way that is sustainable. And if you're wondering, like, okay, well, how do I even get started? Because again, it just seems so complicated. Let's walk through a few easy steps. So step one, I want you to identify a metric that if you started tracking, it would make a difference. And if you're completely lost, I do have a free guide for you. Three metrics you need to know in order to shatter your sales plateau. If you hop on the VIP wait list for metrics mastery@amytrad.com you can grab this completely free guide that's going to walk you through three different metrics that no matter what type of business you have, product, service, whatever, these are three easy to track metrics. But the, the really big key to this, I just want you to think about the one thing, not everything.
Amy [00:07:10]:
We're going to simplify this. Think about the one thing you want to improve in your business right now. Is it sales? Is it engagement? Is it leads? Just pick one and focus on the metrics tied to that goal. So, for example, if your goal is to increase sales, track your conversion rates, track your average order value so you know where exactly you are right now. Because when you know your goal, you can hit your goal, you can reverse engineer anything. But what happens is when you don't know your goal, it's like trying to hit a target with a blindfold on. It's just harder because you don't know where you need to focus. And that's what it comes back to.
Amy [00:07:59]:
It comes back to that clarity and intentional focus. We want to be so laser focused on what we're doing that we get those results. So step one, once we've identified those key metrics, step two is creating a simple tracking system. Remember, the key is simple. It doesn't have to be fancy. Even if you're not a spreadsheet person, you're like, nope, can't do that. Grab a notebook. Just start tracking.
Amy [00:08:29]:
Where are those leads coming in from? Write down those metrics and track any changes and just start to look for patterns. What patterns are you noticing? And then step three, use your metrics to make decisions. Leverage that data to drive those decisions. You're looking for trends over time. If your numbers aren't improving, okay, it's an opportunity. What adjustments, what little tweaks can you make? Because the beauty of metrics is that it takes the guesswork out of decision making. Because your metrics are not here to judge you. They're literally a mirror.
Amy [00:09:11]:
They're just reflecting back the reality. They are not here to criticize you, but what it is, is it allows you to make informed decisions, to know exactly where to focus your time and energy so you can double down in the places that it's going to be most efficient and effective. And once you start leveraging data, you are going to wonder how you ever ran your business without it. So if you have been working harder than ever and not seeing the results you want, it's time to stop guessing and start tracking. Because tracking is the way to growth. And metrics are your secret weapon. They will help you make smarter decisions to create the consistent growth that you can have so that you can shatter your sales plateau. I want you to just take a deep breath and start tracking.
Amy [00:10:16]:
Start simple. Identify, create, and leverage. It's that easy. And when you do this, you will be amazed. It is not about hustling harder. It's about clarity, intention, and focus. All right, I am here cheering for you. And until next time, remember to leverage your data and shatter your sales plateau.
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