Define Your Key Performance Indicators

Lesson Info

Define Your Key Performance Indicators

All right, here we go way air going to get into some stuff today all right here's our goal identify what metrics to follow to ensure the success of your business identify what metrics to follow to ensure the success of your business how many of you pay attention to any kind of metric on a daily basis? Okay a couple of you yes, I think probably the online audiences thinking pretty much the same thing some people are real numbers people real detail oriented and can get excited about the metrics that they have other people I have fallen into this camp before I could get really obsessed with numbers and so sometimes I check out on the numbers for awhile because they take me down the wrong path or they waste my time but we're going to talk today about the metrics that are actually important um and the ones that are important to you because the ones that are important to you might not be the ones that are important to me but before we get into that let's take a look at what we did in the pre...

vious lesson lesson businesses that stand out are clear on what's important to them now originally way back in lesson three we talked about this in terms of personal values but in the previous lesson we turn we talked about this in terms of response so what responses motivate you and inst spirt you uh, to create new work to do your best work to do work that's unique to you and to move your business forward. Businesses that stand out are clear on what's important to them directing your prospects, actions keep you on track and focused. One of the ways that we can get off track is by paying attention to things that don't matter paying attention or worrying about how other people's businesses get their customers to respond. You know, worrying about, you know that while my my people don't do this or my people don't do that, how can I get them to do more of this or that? Maybe that doesn't matter to you, maybe it's not important just because one person sets their business up in a way that elicits a certain response doesn't mean that your business has to set itself up that way. Now, let's, look at where we are in session three so far, we've identified our vision. We've worked on eliciting the right responses in this lesson. We are going to define key performance indicators that is up m b a term if I ever heard one. All right, so you guys are all gonna walk away today with with the nba's, okay, that is not on credit, this is not accredited by any organization, ok? Let's first talk about vanity metrics and I hinted at this in our in our previous lesson vanity metrics and this is the this is a term that was as far as I know coined by eric reese the lean start up vanity metrics are those numbers that we pay attention to that don't actually tell us anything about the health or success of our business and one of the reasons this is important and lean startup world is because startups are notorious for concentrating on metrics that mean diddly squat you know? So maybe it's new free users well, you don't know at the beginning how many free uses they're going to turn into paid users and so maybe it's it's a vanity metric for you maybe it's page views right? Website clicks don't mean anything if those website clicks aren't turning into the actions that make your business successful you know it could be all sorts of things what are some numbers that you guys have tracked in the past that have turned out to be unimportant vanity metrics? Melissa uh social media yeah social media followers yeah that's another big startup bumble to write is well, we've got one hundred thousand followers on twitter great how much revenue gibbering and last year zero okay let's talk about that in your billion dollar valuation other vanity metrics yeah michelle um block post comments block post comments yeah, absolutely if you don't see black post comments turning into the people who are commenting turning into customers that's a vanity metric it doesn't really mean anything you know, for me a lot of times the people who were commenting were on my block were awesome members of my community maybe they were brand evangelist there were people who got really excited about what I was doing on dh really liked talking back, but I very rarely saw those comments turning into the kind of clients that make my business really successful those kind of clients would lay really low they might be on my email last in fact, they were probably on my email list, but they weren't tweeting me they weren't facebooking may ah lot of them weren't even emailing may and then all of a sudden they would decide this is my time and they pulled the trigger either they'd schedule a session with me or they'd sign up for one of my programs I had no idea that that they were there and then I got really excited like, well, where have you been and thank you so much and I'm thrilled to work with you so yeah block comments or another really, really great one facebook likes is the one that I always come back to is that's a big vanity metric now and I even say that having putting right now a lot of attention on my facebook page it's something that I'm enjoying experimenting with, but I also know that if I can't measure the things that actually count, then it doesn't it's not helping me, so I'm doing two things I'm I am tracking some of those things that it would be more like vanity metrics like new likes to my page or likes on post, but I'm also pairing that with an ad strategy that allows me to track conversions so that I know when those increased facebook likes are actually leading two dollars and sense and when they're leading to email sign ups and those are our two necessary responses are two non negotiables your business must be driving new email sign ups and purchases, and so I can balance those two things I could turn what could be a vanity metric into something that's actually, you know, driving the success of my business or contributing to the success of my business. So what actually counts? What actually counts? We've talked about too, and this is going to go for everybody you need teo be defining email sign ups and sales as performance indicators of your business because if you're not driving sales, you're not making money and you won't be in business for long, and if you're not driving email sign ups, you're not building new prospects it's essentially it's lead generation right and if you're not generating new leads if you're not bringing new people into your business then there won't be more money to give make sales and give you money later on not a problem so those were the two things but there are other there are other metrics there are other numbers that we can track that really count towards the success of our business some of them happened before the sale and some of them happen after the sale and ideally there's a sort of cycle that happens where there's metrics or indicators that I track before that sale happens like email subscriptions and then there's metrics that I track after the sale happens so you know, client results or customer results or referrals or even tweets you know, maybe someone signs up for your new low price service and they tweet about it uh that could be that could be something that pulls people back into that loop, right? And so if you are concentrating on getting those metrics higher presumably higher is what you're looking for and not something like bounce right where you're going lower but who's that was well we use higher then if you're making those those numbers higher then that's goingto output on the other end in making your bank account higher yes good do we want that do we want more money? Okay good okay so keep performance indicators are the metrics the count and you don't have to track everything. I don't want you to think that old gosh here is giving me this crazy amount of homework to dio in my business every day or every week or every month, you don't have to track everything you want to track those few metrics that really, really means something. Those things that you want to be able to push the needle odd so you could get more results out on the other end. So let me give you some examples on we'll start with my business in kickstart labs, which is our membership community it's ah it's, a support community, a resource library and access to me for a monthly fee. The goal is to be a non going resource and support community, which means we want members to stick around it's, not about buying in for a month, getting what you need and getting out, because getting what you need, the reason that you want to be there is for ongoing support, ongoing community access, ongoing access to me and I'm going access to our resource is the goal is longevity both for me and I want my my customers goal to be longevity as well, because I want them to be in business and I want them to be continually improving their business for the long term, so all of our metrics look at how to get people to stick around. So, yes, we measure new subscribers, so every week my assistant goes in and looks on makes a tally for me, so I don't have to pay attention to it on a daily basis because this is something I would get stuck on or obsessed with. So she goes in and she looked at the new members and says, okay, we've got five new members this week. We have ten new members this week. Maybe this week will have fifty new members that's this week, fifty new members, but we also measure new conversations. So part of the community is a google plus community, or at least it is for now where members can talk back and forth to each other, they can get advice for me. They can get advice from our community member and get advice from other members on dh just kind of trade back and forth back and forth information it's awesome. So we actually measure how many new converts stations take place on a weekly basis because we know that new members stick around longer when they're engaged in the community and the easiest way to get people engaged in the community. Is to give them regular reminders that were there and the nice thing about google plus is that every time a new conversation starts, most people are getting a notification to their g mailbox or that little red a circle in the top part of their screen but but you know, there's something new to look at in this community when our customers when our members stay engaged, they stick around longer when they're not engaged and that monthly fee comes out of their account there like oh, I really need to cancel that I haven't used that at all so we want to make sure that we are pushing the needle on getting them engaged and making them want to stick around makes sense that's a really simple, really relationship driven key performance indicator okay, now let's look at one of my other pope lisa yes, so do you also measure like the level of engagement within the posts like we don't track that one we could that would absolutely be interesting we have a pretty assistant level of engagement pretty rarely does anyone post and only get one or two responses back and when they do it's mostly like oh you've answered that question thank you so much we're like oh that was that was exactly what I needed I'm regularly really impressed with the level of engagement on each post so it's not something that we felt the need to crack right now but it's it's something another thing that we can do to varying degrees and we're working on improving this is that inside our members area on the website we used a woo plugin called sense, eh that allows us to track how far people get in the resource is that we have on the site and so that's something else that we dio is you know, how many people are finishing these things? How many people are starting new courses on a regular basis? How many new courses are they starting on dh then you know, as time goes on because we're always fiddling with these things, so sometimes we contract certain things and sometimes we can't but as we as time moves on in the community grows will be able to make relationships between how many new courses someone starts or how far they get in courses and how long they're a new member because with membership sites turnover is one of the biggest problems that you have to look at and we actually tracked that as well. So it's not just new members but current active members s so that I can see where we're going up and down where there's attrition and when there's growth on dso knowing what you're so cycle on the average customer is whore knowing for us knowing what your cycle on the average customer is is really important because then if we can extend that, then we make more money on this that it's funny even that statement makes me feel a little uncomfortable because I don't want anyone to think that there were being reduced two numbers and this is something we all have to think about just because you have a relationship based business doesn't mean that numbers aren't important you khun track numbers and not feel like you're reducing your customers to being a number I don't want anyone to feel like a number that's why? You know you could tweet me and I'll tweet you back that's, why you khun you can come here and I'll I'll talk to you and we'll talk more over the brakes, you know, I don't want anyone to feel like a number, and numbers are a key way that you could drive success in your business and understand what actually makes you successful. So let's, look at another example in my quiet power strategy program. The goal is to help clients double their revenue and earn and for us to earn referrals back to the program. Referrals is one of the major ways that we get people back, and so we track this by measuring homework completion and client revenue generation, so in other words, not I'm not tracking my revenue generation, I'm tracking their revenue generation, the more people that hit the eight a thousand dollars plus or more mark during you know, a certain period around the program the more I know they're likely to refer back to the program and be highly satisfied with their experience that's sort of like the threshold and so I'm I'm constantly looking at that number but we also measure homework completion and one of the reasons that we do that is because I coach that program at a high level now but I have three coaches that work underneath me and so they each have a group of clients s o I want to know who I can't keep track of everybody I have a relationship with everyone because I talked to them on the phone you know every week but I can't keep track of everyone's homework completion so we have a spreadsheet where we track this out and we look at okay this person did this homework this person did this homework this person did this homework and not only that but you know this was the ah ha moment that they had or this was the insight that we came up with that helps me create a better experience but it also helps me know you know it's it's an indicator of the success of the program and how satisfied people are inside of it yeah so we want our clients to do the work but we know they refer mohr when they get results too so and that's what? This is all about it's all about the cause and effect. Key performance indicators are about cause and effect. So if I know my clients refer more when they get results, like generating more than eight thousand dollars in unexpected revenue or unplanned revenue because of the program, then I want to help as many people get eight thousand dollars or maurin unplanned revenue in a certain period of time because that's going to set me up really well for the next watch and it works really well. Okay, uh, so to six figure launches later for this program, I think I think we're doing okay. So what metrics can you follow to ensure success down the line? In order to figure out what metrics you want to follow, what metrics you wanna track to ensure your success? You need to know what that success is. So you want to look at what some of your goals are, and these air little goals were going to set one big goal later in the session. But for now, let's, look at little goals. So think about your products. What goals do you have for your individual products? Do you want to keep people around longer? Are yu looking for new sales? Are you looking for consistency and sales? Are you looking for the success of individual launches? Where maybe you've got too big places where sales coming here other people, the six success for them is consistent, predictable revenue from their products. What constitutes success for each of the products or offers that you make? Then think about your marketing and outreach. What constitutes success for your marketing and outreach? Is it new e mail? Some sign ups? Is it more twitter followers? Because new twitter followers doesn't have to be a vanity mattrick if you've got a way to turn that into sales, then by all means do that maybe it's active participation on a webinar you know, it's it's pretty standard nowadays that if you get a thousand people to sign up for your webinar, you'll get about one hundred fifty to two hundred people to actually show up, and then I would say that's on the high end, so about fifteen to twenty percent of people that sign up for a webinar actually come out. So maybe one of your metrics is that you want to push active engagement on your web in ours, and so you're going to say, all right, my baseline of success is twenty percent, but I want to hit twenty five percent because I know what that extra twenty five percent I can convert this many more sales do your head's hurt yet? I hope not, okay, good lisa so when you look at the email sign ups like I have say, a five day little program that they're going through and so and that then leads to a a sale like a possibility of a sale so do you track that they finish like they open all the five days or do you track just the sale of the end eso again you're gonna want to choose what you follow yeah and you're not going to be able to follow everything so what I look for with my auto responders sequence is just the open rate for each one and it might be it might be more helpful for me teo look at in aggregate so being able to say, you know, ten percent of people finish the whole program and be able to change things like that it's not something I'm working on optimizing right now I feel pretty good about it if it's something you're working on optimizing, then you can go much deeper into the numbers and start experimenting with more things. S so that's what I look at in terms of email sign ups, everyone should know what their conversion rate iss so your conversion rate is how many people visit your website or visit a particular landing page and then convert to an e mail subscription? How many of you guys know what your conversion rate is on your website or for a particular landing page? All right, so that's something we're going to change that everyone write that down right now. One of your key performance indicators is tracking some conversion rate to your email list. For me, the main one I track is on ah landing page or multiple landing pages because landing pages is something that I can push the needle line it's less easy for me to just get mohr page views, so like sending more people to my home page and getting maybe them to collect her to click through. Sign up for on my newsletter sign up that's their what I know works is that when I send x number of people to a particular landing page forty five to fifty five percent of people that go to that landing page end up on my list. I have really good landing pages. Yeah, and I know that because I track it and I make adjustments, right? So that means that then if I'm twittering, oer, facebooking, orp interesting, or just telling you, go to terra gentilly, dot com slash quiet power and you condemn, download the free quiet power strategy map so you can give your business direction and strategic vision. I know that for every thousand people that go there, five hundred of them are going to end up on my list what do you like to know that what do you like to be able to say? Ok, today I drove fifty people to that page tomorrow I'm going to go for seventy five because then you're going from twenty five sign ups on one day, two thirty five sign ups on the next day would you like? Thirty five sign ups are new sign ups on your list, okay, that's, how this works. It's really exciting on dh there's very easy ways to track that I'm not going to get into that today. Any way you can google google analytics, you can google google analytics help, and they will you'll find lots of tutorials for setting up goals and your google analytics another easy way to do it is just with thank you pages and using, like your built in stats on your website. So you know, wordpress comes with jet pack, and that has sites, stats in it and you contract how many people go from your landing page to a thank you, paige? Okay, lots of lots of information out there on that. I just want to give you the idea that that's something you want to be doing. All right. I want you to think about sales conversations. What are your goals in terms of a sales conversation? Is it how many people that you want to get on the phone with you one on one in a free consultation? Is it how many new people you want on your list before you enter scaled sales conversation? In other words, a launch? What are those metrics that help you determine whether it's sales conversation is going to be effective or not? For each goal, decide on a k p I that measures your progress toward likelihood of achieving that goal for each goal. Decide on a k p I that measures your progress toward the likelihood of achieving that goal. Yes, can you restate that sales conversations piece? Yeah, eso sales conversations you could do this lots of different levels, so one really easy way is how many requests for free consultations do you get? If you if you're a business that does free consultations than one k p I you should be tracking is how many requests or how many free consultations that you're doing and then how many of those results in sales because sales is a numbers game when you get a system for sales or even before you have a system for sales even still predict how many leads turn into actual sales, and then you can figure out how many leads you need to be generating to get to your revenue goal all of these things tie together beautifully now you could do the same thing, so when I have a sales conversation it's most likely going to be at scale in other words, I'm gonna have a sales conversation with my whole list or with a segment of my list, and so I have a goal and a metric that I'm following uh, leading up to every launch to get a certain number of new people on my list because I know that some people in my program are going to come from new people to my list and some people are going to be the old people I'd say it's probably about fifty fifty, really, so I want to know that I can, uh, that I can count on those new people as well as the people who've heard the sales message before does that make sense? So those would be the two ways that I look at it? I'm sure there's there's other ways as well, but there's the ways that are coming to me right now. Thank you. Yeah, so let's look at some other examples here, and this is jennifer wilson. She runs a site called simple scrapper on dh she is a quiet power strategy alum. She pays attention to churn rate so simple scrapper is a membership community where people can go and get re sources in tutorials on scrapbooking on dh she's very successful and she runs this great community and it's really well differentiated from other things in her niche but she pays attention to that churn rate. How many client, how many customers? How many members are leaving on the average month and how or in any given month and how many new members is she getting? Because she knows if she keeps that churn rate down, she doesn't actually even have to go out and do outreach to get us many new members or the our reach that she is doing counts mohr because mohr members are sticking around that makes sense. This is phyllis wilson. She has ah website called the wise woman's path, phyllis pays attention to subscriber conversion rate and the length of time it takes new clients to book an intro session after signing up, she actually had a whole list of metrics that she gave to me and I was super super impressed. So phyllis wilson, if you are listening, kudos again, but that's so subscriber conversion rate for her she then tracks how long in the outer responders siri's or how long on her list someone has to be the book that intro session because she knows if she can shorten that period of time, that each one of those subscriber conversions essentially counts more, it gets her closer to her goal and so by pushing the needle on one she can push the needle on the other one that eventually ends up in dollars in her bank account smart and phyllis is a great example here because phyllis is running kind of an intuitive, wise business spirited business mentoring for creatives, coaches and healers this is a relationship based business but just because it's relationship based doesn't mean that conversion isn't important and optimizing her business for conversion is imp horton tw and optimizing your business for conversion or tracking numbers so that you know what that when you're putting effort into your business that it's actually creating results you can't just hope people pick up the phone you can't just hope they e mail you you can't just hope they're going to hit that big blue bye button there's a big blue by button on the screen right now all right so you want teo make sure that you're tracking the right numbers so let's get to a hot seat because we need teo we need to actually bring this into the real right with you guys kate I'd like to bring you up because you've got this look on your face like way how can we do this now so tell us who you are, what you do and where we could find you online I'm kate sadowski I am annihilating practitioner and you can find me at beach ayurveda dot com yeah b I j k I j r okay, so, uh what are some of your product service goals right now? Um right now I've been doing one on one consultations um but I'd like to move my business away from the one on one um and into more group work. So what? That means the combination of in person events and a combination of online community okay, um and do you mind me asking how big your list us right now that's such a personal question it is it's a little under two hundred ok, so I would say one of your goals is to get your list to a thousand yes in the next three months. Okay, very doable. Honestly it's very doable, but you have to have a plan and you have to know what you're what you're what you're paying attention to to be able to do that. Okay, so that's goal number one I want you to hit a thousand subscribers in the next two three months. So what actions that you could take to get you to a thousand subscribers? Um well, I did. I did a thirty day email program in january which is great and so much more work than I ever anticipated and and I was very grateful for the work and I was a little burned out afterwards and so building back that mo mentum um from that process I realize that there's a lot of places that I could kind of advertise my writing oh la posts and how to get out to people so I'd like to make kind of a product that people get when they sign up for my email list yes out of that thirty days of writing yes so we're gonna be talking about this in session for specifically but yes so you wanna have a welcome gift ftt and it sounds like you want to do a lot of outreach in terms of putting your writing on other people's platforms to welcome people back into your community and perfect that is a great plan for getting to a thousand subscribers so I would repurpose your thirty day content for this welcome gift and you might not want to use all thirty days you might want to choose a particular theme a particular goal a particular pain point and we will talk more about that but so yes that's that's a great place to start on dh then I think looking for media outlets or places you can place your writing where you can write mohr on that theme because you're going to want to get people in on that theme and ideally you're going to be eventually launching a group program on that theme as well so you want everything to tie together okay that's part of the focus piece right? Yeah so now we've got multiple we've got a multiple pronged approach here the end goal is a program on this theme just give me a team so that I don't have to stop a placeholder umpire evaded constitutions oh you're gonna make me say ira very close okay let's pick something that's fine meditation meditation okay, so you're gonna do a group program on meditation which sounds wonderful and you're welcome gift is going to be themed around meditation and you're going to go out and write a serious of ten articles on other people's platforms on meditation now one um I don't know if I'd call this a key performance indicator, but definitely a number that you're going to want to track is how many pitches you're going to need to do to get ten placements now you might find you only need to do ten placement because maybe of really good ten pitches because you have really good connections ah lot of people are going to have to do twenty thirty, fifty pitches to get ten placements and pitches don't have to be scary. Bridget lyons has a great creative live class that works walks you through pitching pitching media but you're going to do you're going to track how many pitches it takes to get one placement so that you have a goal of how many pitches you have to make to get those ten placements then in your each of the bios for that you're going to have so you're going to get this little byline that says kate sadowski is an arab obviated practitioner who specializes in meditation get her special meditation welcome gift you'll write a better call the action than that special welcome gift click here then you're going to track how many people click on that link and then end up on your email address okay, so you're they're gonna click through to a landing page and all landing pages in this context is a sales page for your email list, right? Because when someone gives you their email it's a sale it's an exchange it's a transaction and so we create these special little pages that help people uh understand the value of signing up for your list the value of giving you their email address in exchange for your welcome gift okay, so the number of people that click on that page and you'll be able to track that really easily just looking your word press or in google analytics and see how many people are landing on this page then you're gonna have a thank you page set up on the other side of that that directs people back to their inbox to click the confirmed button right? You know how these things work so you create that thank you, paige and you'll you'll see how many people land on this page versus the thank you paige you divide the thank you page number by the click through number, and that gives you your conversion rate. Ok, alright, so thats your conversion rate. Then, you know, once you've established what that conversion rate is let's, say it's thirty percent to start, you know that for every hundred people you drive to that page, you get thirty, new subscribers, and that means two things you can do there. And you can dr mohr traffic to that page say you drive two hundred people and you get sixteen, new subscribers and you can up your conversion rate. So by tracking your conversion read by paying attention to that you can make changes to your landing page. They get more people to see the value of the product. Okay, so if I've got a landing page and it's only converting at thirty percent, I might try changing the headline. Or I might try shortening the copy. Or I might switch out the image. Or I might change the color of the opt in box. And I would only do one of those things at a time, and then I would measure the conversion rate again. I'd send a bunch of new traffic through, and I'd see what happened now, there's all sorts of tools that you can use online for helping you out with this and there's all sorts of, you know, a be testing things that you could do to I wouldn't recommend unless you're really into this, and you're sending a lot of traffic through one of these things that you get that you put that much effort into it. There's a very simple things that you, khun dio like spending a week on each headline, you know, and just trying it week by week, right? It doesn't have to be your feels more doable, that's obsessive, good, yes, it doesn't. Um, well, some people's businesses there should be obsessive, but not not anyone here, so so do that, and then you'll be able to tell, so then you'll run through some sort of sales conversation, and you'll see how many people from your list convert to the group when you make that offer, that doesn't help you out at first, but what it does is set you up for the next time you run that group, because then, you know, all right, at least this time I was able to convert two percent of my list to this group, and now I know if I want you know, this many more, uh, people in my group or if I just want to run a new group in three months, I need to add this many people to my list. Does that make sense to create because it gives it a, um it tells me the road, it gives me the map, and that tells me how to turn, like, the little road into a highway, if I need teo, thank you, that is way better metaphor that I could have come up with that's really that's exactly what we're doing here. And that's, what defining key performance indicators is all about, and the reason that I've included it in stand out business is because, you know, all of our key performance indicators are different, and so it leads us to different kinds of actions, or are different kinds of actions lead us to different kinds of indicators, and so you really want to pay attention as someone who ahs people who are building stand out businesses to what your particular indicators are, so that you could take actions on those things that really make sense to you. And so right away, you said, I want to get my writing out on other media to meet so that's, part of your standout style that's, part of your standout strategy, and so from there we can craft the metrics that help you get them to the results that you want for someone else, they might say, I wantto like melissa was talking to me about interviews, so she might say, I want to be on twenty different podcasts, because I know when I'm on twenty different podcasts, I can convert that into this many new subscribers and convert that into this money, new sales. And so now she's really focused on one particular action that's going to help her business stand out and that's exactly what you, what you're doing to your setting yourself up for thought leadership through writing on multiple media outlets that also ties back to the school that you have. And now you've got this intense focus on something that's actually gonna create results. I feel so much better than hey, I'm going to write an article good, so lower professional think you have any questions about that? No. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Does it feel a little more concrete now? Any questions about choosing your key performance indicators? Yes, amy, I just had kind of a logistical question to you to suggest, like if you have a landing page or like a free page that it's actually hidden and not in the navigation bar on your site that matters, so I've done it both ways, I do have, I don't know julie remember no it's, not on my site right now. It's it's on the home page there's a button to click through to get to my main landing page, which is for the quiet power strategy map so you click the find your power button and you get to this landing page and it's got the opt in there on my old sight. I had a free map link in my navigation, but there's lots of other landing pages that I have in fact, in your worksheets, there's actually landing pages suggested throughout because I would like everyone who's watching to be on my email lists, it would make me really happy it probably made me a lot of money to it would be really good. Me too, yeah, so I've got different landing pages that you could really only get two by having these worksheets on do you know I might choose to drive traffic to them other ways as well, but they're they're built into this program. It's, you know, one of the things that we're doing with the easter eggs to write, where you can get the free pdf version of the book each one of those you know, um, those easter egg landing pages are something that's hidden on my site because it's something special I'm not trying to like trust me, the pattern on it is very easy there like that no one is going to not figure this out. I'm not trying to be sneaky it's just I don't like clutter, so I want everything to be really clean. I like to direct things that's probably part of my power personality like I want to tell you at a certain time to do this thing, I think that's really helpful, but you can absolutely do it both ways sometimes it's going to be something that's a little bit more out there and sometimes it's going to be something that's a little more hidden got it great, kathy, in the beginning you talked about your making your ki performance indicators or your metrics that you follow with like that eight thousand dollars that people are making an anti and income. So what would be like a good one for someone who's working with a more squishy business like so for you? Yeah, the easiest thing to track would be employee turnover at the businesses that you worked with so that's what I wrote down but I was like, is that a good one? Absolutely, absolutely. So cathy works on creating better corporate cultures at small to mid size businesses yes, right on when you create a more distinct intentional cult corporate culture one of the one of the results that you can get from that is decreased employee turnover and businesses loved decreased employee turnover because employee turnover is expensive time consuming it takes your resource is away from other things and makes you just less good at what you're doing so if you can say not only are you tracking it for yourself but you can also then say on average rock your culture reduces employee turnover by twenty percent you could even turn that into dollars and cents and the average employee on boarding process costs fifteen thousand dollars so I saved my business is a quarter million dollars a year after they worked with may so start doing case studies right away yeah absolutely absolutely okay, yeah yeah so you could turn this metric that you're using as a way to track your particular performance within a company into a metric you khun user into an example of that you can use in your marketing to pull more people in right? Yeah, great question. Lisa yeah following on from what amy ask what's your point of view about like start here pages where people list you know two or three places that you could sign up for um I mean so start here paige is good, fine I mean, it's depends on how it's executed so are you leading people to pages that then convert well or you leading people to page is that don't convert well so uh one thing that I've uh started doing much more intentionally is tracking the value of individual blogged posts so if you go into google analytics e got all of it if you're going to google analytics and you set up a goal all from conversions which essentially says I want to know how many people go from this page to this page you know so from your landing page to your thank you paige on each conversion each goal each completed goal is worth twenty dollars or thirty dollars whatever it might be so I did it moderately unscientifically where I just took last year's revenue and I divided it by last year's average list size and I chose a dollar amount based on that that's it so I took that dollar amount and assigned it to the goal and then in google analytics when you view your content you can see the value of an individual block post and I will say this block post was worth one hundred fifty dollars to you this week based on the dollar amount you assigned to that goal and so then you know if one block post is worth one hundred fifty dollars and one block post is worth zero dollars which block post you want on your start here paige yeah okay cool yeah because sometimes your most of popular post this happens a lot when block post go viral sometimes you're most plot popular block posts don't convert for poop, they don't turn into actual people who are interested in what you're doing, and so you might try and drive more and more traffic to it because it's easy but it's not actually converting. I actually just saw that in my own sight, like I have been spending money on driving people to a page that's not converting. Okay, now I need to look at it a little bit closer, see if maybe, you know, what's the bounce rate on that page. Are they landing on this and leaving? Are they landing on this and going further in? Because if they're landing on it and going further in there's a high likelihood that they actually are converting in the end on dh you khun even look at those things, but yeah, so that's it that's an easy way, tio, think about what is more valuable what actually leads to results for you. Thank you. Okay, yeah, yes, going a little too far down the rabbit hole. Okay, it is just tell them we're are already far. Um, I'm wondering. Like when you're choosing your top two or three k p I c u wanna be tracking? Do you consider leading indicators versus trailing indicators basically what's closer to the money and what's further for the money in terms of trying to find a balance of because you could track this stuff looks like immediately translates to dollars, but then maybe you have the whole leading side, your business that you're not tracking. Yeah, I would I would look at something it kind of different places along the journey of because you definitely want to track indicators of people coming into your best ness reaching your business for the first time, and then absolutely you want to track indicators that further down the line. S o I can track indicators that tell me, tell me how many people are going to sign up for kickstart labs? You know, a new email subscriptions would be one of them on how many people are opening the email that they get in the auto responders see serious, that leads to that results, but then I also I'm goingto keep tracking that new conversation indicator because in kickstart labs, where you're paying a monthly fee, that new conversation number is very close to the money, if that makes sense. So, yeah, good question, I don't have any like benchmarks for people to use on that, but it's, it's definitely something want to keep in mind, I think, to the kind of categories that you've given lends itself well to that, like when you're talking about product, I mean, marketing and outreach is a leading indicator that's like way out in front and then sales conversations is closer to the sales conversation like the one in the product is, you know, your referrals retention, that kind of stuff exact okay, exactly. All right, let's keep going. What? You pay attention too gross when you take the time and energy to pay attention to a particular number, it grows. Why? Because when you're paying attention to it, you're naturally going to start choosing actions that pushed the needle on that result. That is a great way to direct your day today action in your business so your key performance indicators are part of your standout style because your key performance indicators focus your actions, they help you create that focus that people pays attention, teo that people pay attention tio they help you, you know god, they help guide your actions for things that you are most effective at. And when you are effective, people pay attention, so keep performance indicators even though they're this kind of really business see inside your business kind of thing actually help you stand out by virtue off what they direct you to dio in your business so here's today's homework decide on two to three metrics are indicators that lead to actual results in your business. Decide on two to three metrics are indicators that lead to actual results in your business avoid vanity metrics. If you don't know the direct cause and effect between the metric that you're tracking, don't use it, ensure what you choose is actually measurable, too. Don't just tell me that you want people to you want to. You want to track how loyal people feel to your brand. What is an indication of that loyalty? Is it a neck stream, lehigh. Open rate on your emails like that might that might be the thing. Maybe you're open, rate is forty five percent and that's a measure of loyalty in your business, so that could be something that you track. But don't tell me you just want people to be more loyal and then share your key performance indicators with us on twitter using the standout business hashtag

Class Description

Lessons

1. Your Business, Your Way is the Only Way
2. Make Your Business Fascinating
3. Create Your Guiding Principles
4. Analyze the Market
5. Find Your Unfair Advantage
6. Enter the Conversation
7. Fill Your Customers Need: Case Study with Sue Bryce
8. Know Your Conditions for Connection: Case Study with Alex Blumberg
9. Insert Your Unique Point of View
10. Create Unique Content
11. Identify Your Vision
12. Elicit the Right Responses
13. Define Your Key Performance Indicators
14. Track Your Key Performance Indicators
15. Declare Your Chief Initiative
16. Make Your Website Stand Out
17. Write a Stand-Out Business Bio
18. Sell Products That Stand-Out: Case Study with Chase Jarvis
19. Build a Compelling Communiity
20. Create Your Digital Sales and Marketing Plan
21. Check In with Students
22. Creating Email that Stands out & Sells with Julie Gora from MailChimp
23. Stand Out on Social Media
24. Build a Distinctive Blog
25. Sell Yourself
26. Go Forth & Conquer
27. Final Check In with Students