3 Tips To Help You Define & Measure Success In Your Business
It's not the algorithm. It's not the economy. And it's not that your industry is saturated. You're not experiencing success because you haven't paused to define what success means for you, and your business is suffering because of it.
Today, we're gonna dive into how to define success on your terms in a way that helps you make really smart, intentional business decisions to ultimately help you accomplish your goals and get shit done. Let's jump on in.
What Soccer Has To Do With How You Define Success
I want you to imagine that you are playing a game of soccer. Picture a cold, clear, crisp day. Maybe it's maybe a little dewy and there are leaves on the ground, blue skies, sunny. Now, imagine if you're playing this game but no one is keeping score.
How do you know who's won? How do you know what changes to make for your next game? How do you know if you should be excited or sad or frustrated? Or introspective?
Now, I want you to take it a step further. Imagine you're playing a game of soccer, no one's keeping score, and there's actually no net and no cone. How do you know if you've scored?
Where is the line? Where does that exist? How do you know if you're really close, but not quite there?
Now, I want you to take this an even further step and want you to imagine you're playing soccer and no one's keeping score, you don't have a net or cones defining where the goal is and everyone's wearing the same exact color. How do you know who's on your team? How do you know if you've won? How do you know if you've lost? How do you know if certain players are struggling or really going above and beyond? Who can you trust? You can see how lost and confusing that would be.
With this example, I want you to apply that concept to your business. Imagine if no one is keeping score in your business. Imagine if you don't have the net or the cones defining where the goal is. Imagine if you don't even know who is or isn't on your team.
This, my friend, is why we're having this conversation today. Because in a season where it could be so easy to think about the future planning for the next year, setting intentions, it's extremely important to pause and really get clear on what success means in the first place. Because at the end of the day, if you set all these goals, affirmations, and intentions, but you're not definitive on where you're headed, how do you know if you've ever gotten to where you want to go? If it's just some loose place of success, it will be hard to know. And that's why we're talking about this.
The biggest thing I want you to walk away with here is that it has to be tailored to you. It has to be defined in a way that makes sense to you so that you can also have your team super fired up and clear on what it means. As you can imagine, we're not going to play soccer without keeping score, we're not going to play soccer without the net and the goal and we're not going to do it with everyone wearing the same color and being unclear of who plays what role and why or why not.
Why Defining What Success Means To You Matters
We're going to define those things for you. There are some factors to consider before you sit down to map this out. And this work is extremely important to do because it never stops. Just because you define success for your business and yourself today, doesn't mean a year from now you sit down and do the same exercise with the same result.
Because guess what? Sometimes things change. Sometimes, you've scored the goal or won the game, and you need to create new metrics. Sometimes you pivot or you start to serve a different audience. Or maybe you start to offer different services, or maybe you want to change your business altogether.
Regardless, this is not something that's final. This is something that you get to do right now that's going to set you up for success, clarity, precision, and execute it in the way you need for the new year.
How To Measure Your Definition of Success
You have to define what that success means and you have to create a way to measure it. When I ask people, What does success mean to you? They use words like freedom, peace, and calm. That’s fine. But you need to find a way to measure that. Because how do you ever know if you've got there besides a feeling?
We're going to dive a little deeper into this. I have three things I want you to think about when it comes to these metrics.
Don’t just measure what others tell you to measure
It's not what others tell you to measure when you're creating these metrics. If other people are saying hey, you really need to pay attention to the number of likes on your Instagram posts, or the number of dollars you spend on Facebook ads, or the number of clicks you get on your emails you send out weekly. But if that is not your goal, then you're measuring the wrong thing.
Let’s go back to my soccer analogy: if your business is the game of soccer, and you're measuring how many times somebody blocks the goal with their hands, does that really tell you anything about how to score? No, it helps you measure what they did to protect the goal, and those are two different things.
So, we need to really calibrate our measurement system to capture what we're going for. Here's a great example. If your goal or definition of success is a $1 amount in revenue for 2024, then how do we measure that along the way? Maybe it's the number of sales, maybe it's revenue per month, maybe it's the average dollars spent per customer. And those are all different metrics that all capture money in a different way. Maybe it's a combination of all three.
The point here is I want you to stop searching, and reaching out to other people to tell you what to measure. You have to decide what to measure yourself. And if you don't know how to measure it, that's where you can get help and support. That's where a coach could be helpful or a chamber of commerce or reaching out to other resources.
But at the end of the day, you have to be the one to understand what you're measuring and why it's important one, it's not what others tell you to measure, it's what you can measure that makes sense in your mind to help you make decisions that align with your big picture goal and definition of success.
2. Why You Have To Understand & Be Able To Measure Your Money
Number two. What is the point of a p&l If you don't understand it? I am so fired up about this topic, because the amount of business owners I have worked with who hand off the whole keys, the car, everything to their CPA, their financial person, and never look at their numbers ever again is alarming. Now, I am what I would call a napkin math kind of girl. I keep it really simple. I look at how much money came in and out in the last month. And I allow those numbers to help me make decisions in my business. It's that simple.
Is that proper accounting? No, my accountant is probably like, oh my god, this is why you have me. But I am not an accountant. I'm a business owner and I need to look at my numbers in a way that can help me make decisions. When I'm confused, like ab & o We live in Washington state we have b&o tax, I actually had a question about that I hit up my accountant.
So when I don't understand a certain thing, and I have to make decisions around money, and I don't understand it, that's when I reach out to them. But it is not their job just to be my CFO of my business. That is not what an accountant is supposed to do. Just because someone is an expert in their field, if they don't communicate in a way where you understand your numbers in a way to make decisions, I would argue maybe it's time to look for someone else to partner with.
I know that's a sore subject because I have helped more clients than I can count find new people because there was a lot of shame and guilt wrapped up in their money situation. It cost them time and money in tax penalties. So please, if you avoid looking at your finances, I'm shaking you on the shoulder right now because you have to face them. You have to find a way to understand them.
That's why defining success in a way that makes sense to you is so important. The revenue, the cash is part of the puzzle. Aiming for freedom sounds nice. But we don't know if we ever got there if we don't measure it. That's where I think success can be more than just the numbers. Now, I think there's a part of it where it's a feeling or it's looking at your calendar and having it be representative of boundaries you've built in your business. I think that's awesome.
But what I'm talking about today is creating these really definitive points of measurement so you know you're on the right path. Numbers have to be a part of the puzzle. Again, if you don't understand them, hit me up, I'd be happy to chat through my perspective on it and how I help clients with it. I might kick you in the butt and say, Hey, you should probably reach out to a different CPA.
3. Why You Need To Measure The Right Numbers
Number three. What is the point of looking at follower numbers if you cannot correlate that to profits? That last part is crucial because there's actually a time and place where I believe there is a correlation between social media presence and profits. I would argue that's mostly the product space but there are a few caveats to that. If you're obsessing over how many Instagram followers you have, but you’re not looking at how much you are spending on your business every month, Houston, we have a problem.
Just because you're looking at numbers doesn't mean you're looking at the right numbers. And that's the point I'm really trying to make here. Before you sit down and start looking at a bunch of key performance indicators, I want you to create your own measurement system that aligns with your big picture goals. That tells you the story of what's going on in your business.
For example, I used to really care about how many followers I had. I had a spreadsheet, I'd keep track of it. I could not tell you how many I have today. No idea. Because that doesn't tell me the immediate health of my business. Do you know what numbers are interesting and important to me? How many people apply to work with me? I have an application on my website, to work with me one on one and I look at how many people apply. Then I look at how many discovery calls I have a month. That number is interesting to me. Because that tells me there's interest in my offer. The number of people I can convert into my offer tells me I'm doing something right. If I have a hard time converting people, then I need to dig deeper and find more data to give me more input so I can make changes in my business, if that makes sense.
And that's why this conversation around success is so important. Because if I didn't have that clarity, I wouldn't know where to go to seek out those numbers or data points. I wouldn't know if I was doing a good job or not.
I used to say that I don't feel successful. But it's because I did not define what that meant for me. In my mind, I have a $1 amount that leads to success. Here's the caveat: it's not just the dollar amount that defines success. It's that dollar amount and the mindset and the work life balance and the things I'll be able to do if I have that amount in the bank. It's that entire story. It’s the full big picture that I have so clearly defined, not only in my mind, but literally written down above my head right here. It's a combination of all of those things that allows me to be so intentional. Right now I know exactly what things I need to double, triple quadruple down on and I know exactly what things I need to let go or streamline or outsource.
I am laser focused this season. It's because I took the time to define success for myself. No one could do it for me. No number is my full identity, meaning that just because I have a revenue amount that I am aiming for does not define who I am. It doesn't mean if I don't get there, I'm a failure. But if I'm aiming for that number, and I know what metrics to count and look at, that will tell me if I'm on the path to that number or not. That's where I can start to make different decisions in business.
So, to wrap up those three things I want you to consider number one, it's not what others tell you to measure, it's what you can measure that helps you make decisions.
Number two, what is the point of a P&L if you don't understand it? If you’re getting these reports from your financial people, and you are just throwing them away, you're not looking at them, you don't understand it, you don't understand how there's a huge difference between what's on paper and what's in the bank account. It's time to buck up. And it's time to get the answers and either ask your financial person to explain them to you or maybe get some help outside of industry that can help you translate those documents because it's super important for you to understand your business's financial health.
Number three, what is the point of looking at follower numbers, if you can't correlate that to profits? Create points of measurement that help you make decisions.
3 Tips To Help You Build Your Success Metrics
Now, I want to dive into three tips to help you know what to measure. Again, your success has to be tailored to you and where you're going in the industry that you're in –and in a way that makes sense in your mind. I don't care if you write these answers each month on the back of a napkin, it doesn't need to be in some fancy tech system. It's just that you're taking the time to pause and look at this information to help you make decisions. So I have three tips to help you build your success metrics.
Numbers Don’t Lie, But They Also Don’t Tell The Whole Story
Number one is numbers don't lie, but they don't tell the whole story. What that really means is if you are just measuring revenue, so cash coming in the door, but you took half the month off for vacation –on paper, that number alone is going to feel like you had a bad month.
But when you factor in how many days you actually worked, that’s a different story, right? Again, depending on what size of business you're in, and if you are the main service provider in your business. But that's a great example to showcase the fact that you can't just look at the numbers and have that be enough. Just like you can't write out your feelings and have that be enough. We need both quantitative and qualitative information to help us know if we're on the path to success or not.
2. Make Decisions By Determining What Works & What Doesn’t
Number two, the goal is to be able to determine what works and what doesn't to make decisions. That's it. So when I'm defining success for myself, like I said, I have my big picture, financial amount I'm aiming for. I've also done tons of visualization exercises of what that will look like and what that will feel like. What car am I driving? What house will I own? So it's a mix of the two.
But at the end of the day, I have to know, if I look at the last week, was I focusing on the right stuff? And are the numbers and the reflection aligning with where I'm going or conflicting with where I'm going? That's all I care about when it comes to measuring this stuff.
Here’s a story that illustrates this beautifully. When I started my coaching business, I built a course like a lot of people do and nobody bought it because I did not talk about it and I didn't focus on building an audience. The irony is, I actually think I could build a course and sell it today. But that's not on the radar for me currently. I have other things that are more aligned with my why and things honestly that I feel like I could perfect even further. So I'm in a different headspace, a different mindset.
But there was a season in my business where I was constantly looking for subject matter experts to help me get to that “next level” –whatever that meant. I was not defined in my success, I just was loosely aiming for more, whatever that meant.
One of the things I did was hire a Pinterest expert, and this person was great at what they did. From a technical standpoint, they were awesome. Every month, they would give me a recap of how my pins were doing on Pinterest. A lot of experts in the area say that Pinterest is the place to be, it's the fastest-growing channel, it's so super important. I do think there's a time in place where something like that makes sense.
I'll spoil the story for you and say I eventually came to a point where I realized that's not where my time and energy should go in my business. Because every report showed my pins were getting more traction. But the number I really started to measure was sales of my course and the correlation wasn't there. That's when I realized on the Pinterest side of things, it looked like I was growing –I'm getting in front of more people, my pins are being pinned more. On the other end of the spectrum, I'm not selling the course. The whole point of Pinterest is to sell the course. Granted, I know there's a lot more involved in everything. But at that specific point in business, it became clear that that was not working.
I would not have realized that had I not looked on the revenue side. If I had just looked at that Pinterest recap I got every month, I would assume I'm “successful”. But I'm not in the business of just getting eyes on my stuff. I am here to help people and serve people. Part of that is getting them to pay me money so I can help them deeper in their business.
I share that example because if I had only paid attention to the Pinterest numbers, it did not tell the full story. Social media is so guilty of this. There's so many dashboards they track and so many metrics. What's your target age group? Are they male or female? Or what age are they? What area are they located in? It provides a ton of data, which is great. But if you don't sit down to define what data you're paying attention to, you can spend a whole day looking at your metrics and not learn a whole lot about your business.
So, sit and create points of measurement that help you tell a bigger picture story of where you're going.
3. Create A System of Measurement & Stick With It
Point number three is this. Once you choose what to measure, create a system that you'll use and stick to for at least three months to see if it works. Now this last one is the hardest because I can't do it for you. No one can do it for you. You have to do it. So many people struggle with that last point because they're looking for this quick hack. This shortcut or an accelerator program.
Well, guess what? In business, in this specific conversation today about success, in defining it and measuring it, there is no accelerator program. It's about creating the metrics, it's measuring it, and then it takes time. That's it. That's not something that can be rushed. That's not something that anyone can do for you. But it's also cool because it lets you take the pressure off yourself.
So many business owners feel like they're doing horribly, or they're not where they want to be and their shame and their guilt, especially if there's financial hardship involved, is intense. You’d be surprised by the amount of businesses who, on paper or on the outside, look like they are thriving but internally are also struggling in different areas of business.
It's been really humbling but also empowering because we all can learn and grow from each other. If you feel like you're not doing well, but you haven't defined what well is, you're really setting yourself up for failure and you're gonna have a hard time.
Why You Need To Come Up With Success Metrics Yourself
I know I didn't give you a specific measurement or 10 ways to know if you're successful in business. I really want you to come up with it yourself because you have to be able to do this for yourself. It evolves and changes when you're in different chapters of business. It changes when you have employees or contractors. It changes when you have a business partner, it changes when you add a second or third location to your business. All those different life events change things for you. So you need to be able to pick up and redefine success in each of those moments. I can't be the one to do it for you.
I come from a place of compassion here because I think so many of us have this really high convoluted expectation of what we want our business to look like, feel like, and be like, and we obsess about these things. We obsess about working from a beach, and being able to work whatever hours you want. But if you don't define it, how do you know if you're there? On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who are so money motivated, but they don't look at the full picture. They don't look at the quality of life they have, how much free time they have, how much time they have for hobbies, and friends and family.
So I guess what I'm really getting at here is you need both, you need to clearly define it from the numbers side of things. But you need to tell the full complete story. You have to have the full picture to know where you're aiming for and why.
Success means nothing if you're working all the time, and you have zero work-life balance and no time for your friends and family. Sure, you hit your number goal, but then what? What is your worth as a person? What is your value as a person? I encourage you to do this exercise because it's so incredibly important. To an extent, every single one of my clients starts here.
I encourage you to really define what success means for you because at the end of the day, if you don't know where you're going, how do you know if you ever got there?
Join The Get Shit Done Club
Hopefully, you understand how important it is to define what success means for you. But if you still don't know where to start, I highly encourage you to join my free online community on Facebook. It's called the Get Shit Done Club and I go live every single Wednesday, 9 am PST. What's cool about it is it's not just me, there are other people in the room who may help you identify what metrics to measure or how to define sex success for yourself. I highly encourage you to join. It's free. Your other option is to pay me the big bucks to come and work in your business and help you out. I would love to talk about that. But really, most people won't even hop on the free thing because you're the one who has to do the work.