103. Numbers That Nurture: Simple Metrics for Tracking Growth

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I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money.

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Hello. Hello, ladies. How's it going? I am so proud of you for being here today. If you saw the title to this episode about numbers that nurture, you may have been a little intimidated, but I'm really glad you're here. And if you're considering dropping off, please don't, because this is going to be a really great episode. I am not going to overwhelm you with numbers, even though I can be a numbers nerd. And if you're not, that's, it's. You know, it might be great to have a friend that is a numbers nerd, but. Excuse me, I. What I want to do today is to really talk through some simple metrics that I want you to be tracking in your business. And I'm going to tell you why in just a few moments. So stick around. But first, I want to just apologize for my voice. I'm getting over being sick. So if you hear that raspy, cold sounding voice, that's what's going on. But I'm okay. I feel great. Much better than I did a couple days ago, but just getting over the crud, you know, that comes home with the kids and. But I am here feeling great, and I can't wait to teach you what I want to teach you today. And as you know, this first hundred days of the year, I want to just be pouring into you all of the knowledge, the skills, the tools that you're going to need this year to create the momentum to carry out your plan, to achieve your goals. And. And so that's why I want you to think about some numbers. And so if you see if any of this, if you can relate to this. So do you ever feel like you get to the end of the month and there's more month than money in your business? Right? Or maybe you feel like you've done everything in your action plan and you didn't create the clients you wanted and you're like, what's going on? And maybe, or I should say, or maybe you're experiencing tons of success, sales are rolling in, you're doing great, money's coming in, things are rolling and you're not really sure why. Like, what is going on? Is this just a fluke? And I want you to know, no, it's not a fluke. You have created your success and I want you to understand why. Okay? So knowing a few basic numbers about your business and beginning to track them now will set you up for success all year long. Because what I know is that what we focus on grows, right? And I always think about the first time that I crossed the six figure revenue mark within 12 months. And at that time I wasn't really looking very closely at my numbers the way I do now, but I was reviewing the numbers with my financial coach and feeling horrible about my progress because of course my mind is always telling me how everything is, you know, going to hell in a hand basket and not working and all those things our minds tell us. And so I was feeling horrible about my progress and she asked me to look at my, you know, to pull up my accounting program and look at my 12 months rolling revenue. And when I looked at was $109,000 and I was like, what? I had no idea. And that's because I hadn't been looking at my numbers. Right? And so my feelings of everything going wrong and not working were not based in data. Right. They were just my mind drama. So that's why it's really important to, to look at your numbers. Because no matter what you think about numbers, spreadsheets, etc, I'm going to tell you that if it matters to you and the growth of your business, you need to be measuring it. So where our focus grow goes, our money grows. Okay? So what you're the measurements you're going to be focusing on and that focus and those measurements, those two things combined is going to be what's going to help you grow. All right? So it's important to have some data that we look at regularly in our business. And I'm not going to overwhelm you with lots of spreadsheets and all that. We're going to make it pretty simple. And you know, I always say start out simple and then we can build from there. And I've noticed that with myself because I went from there's a time in my business when I didn't really track anything at all and I was just going off of feeling and what was in the bank account and that was kind of flying blind, honestly, and to now where I'm tracking and I know I can see trends and I can see why things are the way they are and I get to see them a lot sooner than when I'm in trouble, right, Because I'm tracking things on a regular basis. And you know, our minds can play tricks on us. This is why it's important to have data and actual facts to look at regularly about our business. So a great example of this is I had a coach one time that was helping me show up more consistently on social media and she'd given me the assignment to post daily or something like that, right? Like to post, I don't know, multiple times a day or once a day or whatever. And I said, okay, I'm going to do it. And I was committed. And. And we met the next week and I was like, yes, I did it. I post, I posted every day just like you said. And she asked me, you know, so that's what I reported back to her. And she said, okay, let's go take a look. She. We pulled up Facebook or whatever, I think it was Facebook or Instagram, whatever. And I'd only posted half the time. And. But my mind was telling me I had posted so much and, and it taken so long, and so I must have posted all those days, but I wasn't tracking it, so I didn't actually know how often, you know, how much I had posted. And I showed up to this meeting and we looked at the data and my mind was playing tricks on me. So that is why it is important to have the data to back it up. I can't tell you how many clients I would have to say, like, I don't know, 90 to 95% of the clients, the women that I work with, when I ask them to estimate, how are you doing with your numbers, you know, revenue wise? How are you doing with your revenue? Just, you know, without looking at the facts, like, how do you feel like you're doing almost all the time. They grossly underestimate how they're actually doing. So they'll say, oh, I'm doing this. But then we go look at the numbers and it's much higher. And this is because our minds play tricks on us. And that's completely normal. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just when we go and look at the facts, that's where we can actually. That's where we can actually see what the truth of the matter is. And so that's why I want you to have some things that you are tracking. So, yes, it's always important to be aware of what we feel like is working and what is not working in our business. But often our feelings and thoughts can deceive, deceive us, right? So if we're keeping data on the things we really want to grow and improve, then we can tease out the truth with data. And so then we can also look at trends and have so much more wisdom and knowledge and what's going on under the hood of our business. Sorry, I was distracted there for a second. I had to put my phone on do not disturb. So the phone. So when it rings, it's not distracting me. Okay, back to the show. So, yes. So whatever we focus on expands. Right. So in this episode, I want to offer you a few pieces of data that I suggest you start tracking right now. Because we're early in the year and it's fine. Whenever you listen to this episode, it's never too late to start tracking. Today is always the best day. Right? So start tracking now and you're gonna have great numbers to look at, even within a couple of weeks, within four weeks, within a month. Right. So I'm not asking you, and I want to caution you, I am not going to ask you to spend tons of time collecting and tabulating data. That is not the best use of our time. It is not a revenue generating activity. So I want you to keep it as simple as possible. If you love spreadsheets, you know, go ahead and set it up in a spreadsheet. But like I said, don't get caught up because, I mean, I love numbers, let me tell you. And I am a geek to the core when it comes to tabulating things and doing ratios and statistics. Statistics and all of that. I loved that when I was in my MBA program. Okay, Anyway, squirrel. But I want you to just keep focused on what are the things, the pieces of data that you want to be watching in your business to create your success and to nurture your growth. Right. So that's what we're going to be talking about. I'm going to offer you a few markers of growth that I want you to be watching from a business strategy perspective. And so your financial planner, your accountant, those folks may have some additional numbers that they're watching or they want you to watch. But I am not an accountant. I am not a financial planner. I'm a business coach. So I won't be covering those here. What I'm going to be talking with you about is business strategy and some of the numbers involved there. Right. So my focus is going to be on watching three main areas of your business. Number one, marketing. Number two, sales. And then number three, the revenue and expenses and profitability. Like the financial aspect. Right. So let's go in order of your client's journey through your business. That's kind of how I like to think about It. So I would need you first to. To consider your big goal for the year, and I'm gonna think about it as a revenue goal, okay? So consider your big goals for the year. Your big goal for the year. And understand where it is you want to see your growth. And once you know that, how do you want to measure what is the measurable aspect of your growth? So, of course, I'm happy to talk through that with you. We'll talk more about that later. But for the purposes of this podcast, I'm going to just ask you to think about, or, you know, I'm going to just be speaking, I should say, about revenue growth. So I need to think, how can I be tracking all of the pieces of my puzzle, of my formula that contribute to revenue growth, right? So as I teach in marketing, I always teach my clients and my students that we need to have a simple marketing plan, right? That you're always bringing in new connections, and you're. And you're probably going to have about three strategies for that, and then you're always going to be nurturing those relationships, right? And having three strategies for that. And so it's. It's a pretty simple marketing plan. I. I'm going to teach more about this in another episode, but I want to just encourage you to have a marketing plan that's so simple, it just fits on one page. Right? But anyway, so you're gonna have these strategies that you're using for growing your network, your audience, your potential clients, and then you're gonna have the strategies for nurturing relationships, right? So for example, my three strategies for bringing in new connections could be networking in person or offering a freebie or. Or speaking engagements, right? Those are all ways to meet people that are new to you. And so then you're going to have three strategies for nurturing relationships, right? Like email marketing or posting on social media or hosting a podcast. So what I would suggest is that you have goals for each one of those activities, and then I want you to be tracking those goals, right? And tracking how your audience is growing, tracking how, you know, people are converting from your email list. So I like to track email list growth. You know, I wouldn't get too deep in the weeds with social media metrics, because unless you're able to track how they translate into revenue, most of the social media metrics are just interesting or more vanity metrics, right? So, so in summary for marketing, I like to. Like to track each of my marketing activities that bring in new connections. How many of those activities I did, how many New contacts they created. And then I track my nurture activities and then the results of those, right? Like watching email market statistics, I could do a whole episode on that. But I have a goal for each one of those and my growth, a goal for my email list growth. And so those are the metrics that I track when it comes to marketing, right? So I keep it pretty simple. And now I have actually just nerd out, nerd out with you for a second. I heard recently one of my mentors talked about how much her revenue is and how large her email email list is. So of course I was like, oh, let me do a ratio, right? So I did a ratio and she is creating about, I don't know, $233 per email contact on her list, right? So that's how I can extrapolate it down to mine. And mine is, I don't know, probably like, I can't remember what it was. 99, 90, 99, like right around a hundred dollars or something. So I was like, oh, I've got plenty of room to. For improvement, right? And then I use that to just kind of extrapolate like, okay, well, you know, if that's what I'm creating from my email list, then how many people do I need on my email list in order to achieve my revenue goal? And so I'm kind of playing around with stuff like that. I'll report back on that later. But, you know, you can really, like I said, get into those weeds. But I want you to just track your marketing activities and what is the results coming from those. And what this also will help you do is make really great decisions when it comes to marketing opportunities. So if someone comes to you and says, oh, I want, you know, I want, I want you to advertise in my magazine, or I want you to advertise on my radio show or whatever it is, then you can ask them some more details about their demographics and like, what the return is that people are getting their other advertisers are getting. You can ask them some of those details so that you can, you know, make better decisions based on what you already know about your audience and your marketing activities. Right? Okay. So number two is sales. And so for sales, I keep it pretty simple. Also, what I want to suggest that you track is the number of sales conversations that you're having. I know each one of us on here is. And you in the audience are all going to have different ways, different client journeys, right? And so you can relate this to your own business. But I'll just Talk about my business. So I track the number of sales conversations I have, right? So I'm doing all these marketing activities, and then I want them to result in sales conversations, right? And then from sales conversations, those will convert to clients. So I'm tracking, like, how many new people are coming into my world, how I'm nurturing those relationships. We already talked about that, right? And then I'm tracking the sales conversations that result from those marketing activities, and then how many of those become clients. And so the reason I do that, because then I can look and see where in my process I want to improve, right? Like, my sales conversion rate right now is about 50%, but my goal for this year is for IT to become 75%. And the power of that is that I can create more clients and bring in more revenue in my business and be doing the same amount of consultations, right? And I just want to create more value and create a better experience on those calls rather than. Rather than thinking I've got to, you know, be doing triple the amount of marketing and triple the amount of sales consultations and then have room in my calendar for triple the amount of clients. Like, there's a lot of ways that we can streamline and make your business more efficient when we're looking at these numbers. And so this is a great place to do that, is looking at your sales numbers and tracking the number of sales conversations that you have and the number of those that convert to clients, right? So then the third area is the financial aspect that I want you to be tracking and for a long time in my business. And you're 100% fine to track in a spreadsheet. Track your numbers in a spreadsheet. You don't have to have a fancy piece of software, an expensive subscription to whatever, you know, the. The accounting software does. Your. If you don't have that, if you do have it, it's fine. If you do have it and you love it and you're using it, that's great. But you don't have to. And like I said, I'm not your cpa. I'm not your bookkeeper, I'm not your financial planner. So they may have a different opinion and of taxes and what they need. You know, you need to give them what they need in order to keep you compliant with taxes. But what I'm talking about is mainly about knowing your. What money you have coming into your business in revenue from your customers and clients, right? And then what money is going out of your business in the form of expenses and taxes. And money that you pay yourself, I want you to be tracking that very simply and then forecasting it forward, which basically means taking an educated guess as to how it's going to look month after month after month. And so when you do that, then when it, like I, you know, we talked about before, it really helps you make good decisions, right? Decisions on how much can I pay myself, decisions on how do I know I'm going to be able to pay my bills in December when it's the quiet time in my business and I make all my money in May. You know, forecasting out is really going to help you. And so what we want to do then is, and also tracking profitability. I have that in my notes here. But I forgot to mention that profitability is the lifeblood of building a business. Right. Unless you have an unlimited supply of investors or, I don't know, I wouldn't necessarily recommend an unlimited supply of debt. But you know, the Internet companies, as we know, Uber and so forth, they, they do apparently. But most of us are not in that boat. And so we stay in business by being profitable. So, so building profitability is key to your long term financial wellness for your business. So make sure you know whether you're profitable and by how much as a percentage and track that. And so I'll talk about that in just a moment. But I've worked with countless women on assessing their profitability and it's been just mind blowing to just very simply pull apart the numbers in their business and look at, you know, what is profitable, like looking at their products and services that are profitable and what's actually profitable and joyful for them. Right. And then it helps you to make better decisions. Right on. Do I want to continue to add, you know, offer this service or this product even though I know it's not profitable and I don't like offering it. But unless you're looking at these numbers, you won't know. So, so that's, yeah, I, I won't go into a lot of detail there just to keep this episode reasonable in length. And so reach out to me if you want me to take a look at your numbers and help you to assess your profitability. Okay. So, and then, you know, there's a lot of women that I talk to that are unclear how to figure out when and how much they can pay themselves. Right. And so they will pay themselves sporadically or pay themselves too much or pay themselves not enough. And so forecasting and understanding and, you know, taking an educated guess about what your numbers are going to look like going forward has helped them greatly by looking at what they can expect coming up and by using the information from the past. Right. So we have to be tracking it from the past. And so that has been very helpful to give them the answers to the question of how much can you pay yourself? Can you pay yourself? Can you pay your taxes? Right. We've all been in that situation where we get to this time of year and we get to, you know, get a, get a letter or email from our accountant and they're like, oh yeah, and now you owe $30,000 in taxes. And you're like, what? So yeah, if we're tracking these numbers and planning for those things, then we will have all that money set aside. Right? So what I want you to do as far as is as finances is be tracking the revenue coming into your business. And I just create a simple spreadsheet with the top line revenue coming into your business. Then below it list all the expenses that you know, all the money that's going out, the taxes that you'll be paying on the revenue, and then any owner distributions. And at the end of that you have your profit. And so you want to be, want to make sure that you, you know, that will help you. Tracking these numbers will help you to make decisions on pricing, it will help you to make decisions on making investments. Right. It will help you to save for taxes. So those are some simple numbers that I would suggest that you keep track of. And I wish you all were here live with me because I'm like, oh, I wonder what kind of questions they have, right? And like I said, the numbers that we're tracking here are not numbers for taxes or for any governing body. These are just your numbers that you can use for decision making and tracking your progress towards your goals as a CEO. And so I think that, think about the questions that you want answered in your business regarding how well things are working. Like, you know, I know part of my growth this year and part of me achieving my goal is going to be growing my email list. And so that's something I want to be tracking. So my question is, is my email list growing and by how much? And so that's something I'm going to track. So whatever questions you have about parts and pieces of your business that you want to make sure are going in the direction that you want them to go, just start collecting some simple numbers. I do this on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and definitely on a quarterly basis and of course on an annual basis. But I'm really Enjoying, because I'm a nerd. I love numbers. So I am, you know, looking at these things on a weekly basis. And it's really helpful for me to, to correct my course, right? And see little tweaks I need to make or, you know, changes things I need to increase or decrease, or what am I constantly falling short on? Or what am I constantly going over plan and how is that trickling down into my revenue? So it's very, very helpful. Okay, so to summarize, the numbers that will help you to nurture your growth fall into three main categories, right? Marketing numbers, sales numbers, and revenue and expenses. And profitability is number three. Right? So for marketing, we want to track our simple marketing activities. Where are you showing up to meet new people? What activities are you doing to nurture? How do you want to track those? How do you want to know if those things are working for you and what actions are resulting in sales conversations? Right? Because for me, it's like, that's how I know marketing is working. If it's translating into sales conversations, that's the whole purpose of marketing, right? Is to translate into mark or sales conversations. And then as for sales, how many sales conversations are you having and how many are you closing? And so what offers are selling and how much? Right. And how many of those offers. That's always interesting to know. Like, you know, we feel like we're always, you know, like I said before, we feel like something is a fact, but then we can go and look and see, you know, how much revenue is coming from a specific product or service and say, oh, I didn't think it was making that much, but that's great, you know, let's go in that direction or whatever. It helps you to make those decisions. Okay? And then finally for finances, I want you to track the revenue coming in, the expenses going out and any distributions and then your profit and predict it out for the rest of the year based on what you know now. And it's okay to be strategically pessimistic, not like, not like Debbie Downer, like everything's going to hell in a hand basket, but just have conservative productions and that helps you to make decisions based, you know, for spending and how much money you can pay yourself, things like that. Then when you come to the end of the month and the quarter and when you're evaluating, like we talked about in episode 102, you'll have another very important layer with which to measure your progress and know what's working and what's not. Because you can, you can match up what you're thinking and feeling to the data and what's actually happening and really have a full picture of what's happening in your business. So as we wrap up today, I want to invite you to just take a moment and reflect on your relationship with your numbers, with numbers in general. I know a lot of us as women have been socialized to feel like we're bad at math or bad at business or bad with money or bad at spreadsheets or whatever it is. And I want you to know it doesn't have to be that way. Right? You can understand this stuff and I'm here to guide you. You know, I'm here for you. Reach out to me if you would like a personalized strategy session where we can work on this together. We'll explore your business, the numbers that you have available, the information, the questions that you want answered about your business. And I can help you build some tracking to really begin to understand what's going on under the hood of your business. And once we get started, you'll see that it's so much more fun than you thought. And I know for some women looking at spreadsheets, looking at money, those kinds of things can shut them down and that's okay too, right? And let's just explore why that is. And I can help you to really get through that and get to a place where you can look at these numbers with the eyes of a CEO, a CEO that loves her business, that wants to see her business grow. Your business is a living, breathing thing and it is growing and it is always sending you messages. And one of the messages comes in the form of numbers. And so I really want to help you to understand your business in this way and to begin to track these things if you're not, or to uplevel your tracking if you are tracking, but not really getting data that's helpful to, to you for making decisions. So I've gone through this process with lots of my clients. One recent client that went through this wants to triple the size of our business this year. And through this process we went through in just one session together, she has her entire roadmap of how to do it and all the indicators to watch to get there by the end of the year. And she's on track for it. It's, I, you know, I keep in touch with her and it's so fun. Another client wants this year to be her first six figure year. And so when we broke out all the numbers and started looking at all the indicators that she needs to be working on to get there. She was able to see how doable it's going to be to get there. And now she's on her way. Right. So remember, the journey to achieving remarkable success is not a solo endeavor. Sometimes it is helpful to have an expert's eyes on your business so that you can get that clarity and that focus and have a strategy that will turn your aspirations into achieved goals. Right? So I would love to support you in this. And so if you feel like that would be helpful, you can always Visit my website, melissamkellog.com in the top right corner, you'll see a big button that says book a call now. And that's a free call. I don't charge for that initial 60 minute call, so you all should take advantage of it because it is so super valuable just to have this clarity and this focus and to just get this understanding of your business. Right? And let's turn those numbers into your success story. Right? This is your year. I know it. I believe it. I believe it for you. So I want to just thank you for tuning in today. And until next time, I want you to keep nurturing your business with focus and intention and cheers to your success and growth. All right, ladies, I'll see you next time. Bye. Hey, if you like this podcast, I.

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