MBA1079 The Importance of Ignoring Vanity Metrics

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These are metrics that people often show off or compare themselves to when they really have no significant value to how your business is actually doing. I know founders of companies that run nine figure businesses with barely a thousand Twitter followers. But I know some entrepreneurs that have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers and are struggling to hit the six figure mark. These metrics don't matter and they slow you down. In today's lesson I'll explain to you why you have to ignore these vanity metrics. How to identify them, how they slow you down and give you the tactics so you can stay focused on what matters in your business, what helps you grow your business and not get caught up with proceeding received clout. This is so important. I used to get lost in this world years ago. And I'm so glad I've implemented these strategies. Strategies I'll be sharing with you today. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Vanity metrics, Boy, are they a doozy. Too many of us are so focused on Twitter followers, on Instagram followers, on how many friends or how many likes we have on Facebook, or how many employees your company has versus your competition. There's a few reasons why vanity metrics are dangerous. Number one, they make you spend a lot of time focusing on things that don't matter. These metrics are exactly what they sound like just for vanity. They don't actually produce sales leads. What does produce sales? Traffic to your website. Leads, Qualified leads, People that are interested in your products and services and actual sales. These are what matter. With the right traffic, I can get the right leads. With the right leads, I can get the right sales. With the right sales, I can grow my business and hire the right talent. That's what real business is. If you have half a million Twitter followers and they're not really interested in what you're selling or buying, or they're not interested enough to buy, then they're worthless. I am sorry. I rather have a thousand followers that love what I do. Even if you have a loyal fan base on social media, that doesn't translate to sales. They're on another platform, they're distracted. You don't have their contact, you don't have their email address. You don't have a way to follow up and make them an offer. You might be surprised when I said the number of employees you have. Well, yeah, a lot of people brag about this at conferences. Well, how many employees your company has? Well, I have 10. I have 15. I have 50. I have a thousand. Listen, if I can run a profitable business, hitting the sales goals I'm looking for with less employees, that's smarter, that's better, that's more efficient. You're spending less money on salaries. Recently, I was at a conference and I met John o' Nolan, who runs Ghost. You might have heard of Ghost. It's a WordPress alternative, a blogging platform. It's open source. And he runs a. Not for profit. I mean, this is a huge company with a lot of. A lot of users, and they run a company with 10 employees. I was really impressed. More impressed than if he told me he had 50 employees. So the number doesn't matter. It's what you do with the number. I also want to mention, when it comes to social media and our followers or our actual Profile, we get hung up on that little blue tick. Are we certified? Are we known? Are we a celebrity? Again, I know some really successful founders with 910 figure businesses and they do not have a blue check. The only check that matters is the one they can cash at the bank. Now when you focus on these vanity metrics, when you're just looking at your competition and seeing, hey, how do I stack up against them? When you with these metrics, it's a huge distraction. You spend too much time building on quicksand, building on a foundation that really doesn't make your business any better. And at the very least it probably maybe increase your marketing efforts a little bit. You're better off focusing on your actual product, your actual service, growing your email list, which are actual leads, people you can contact, increasing the traffic to your website, your SEO increasing. These are tangible things that are real assets. Better yet, work on your conversions even if you don't have that much traffic. Let's say for example, you're getting 20,000 visitors a month. If you can increase your conversion rate on that 20,000, you're going to make more sales and it's going to be worth your while spending that time to increase that conversion. The worst thing you can do to yourself as an entrepreneur is compare yourself to others. And vanity metrics is the gateway drug to that. Now why is it bad to compare yourself? Well, first of all, you have to ask yourself the question, why are you comparing yourself to somebody else? You need to be an individual. You need to build your own unique legacy, your own unique business. We all have different circumstances, different, you know, things that will pull different levers in our business, whether it's our knowledge, our intelligence, our skill level, our experience, our funding, our ambition, how hard we work, how much time we put into it, much time we have. So comparing is really useless because things are just not equal. Everybody is spending a different amount of everything I just listed in their business. The other thing that comparing does is that it influences your taste and your products and services. When you're constantly looking at the competition, you can help us start trying to do the same thing they they do. Rather than build something your own way, your own style that's unique. And again, if your product is not unique, if your service is not unique, then why are they going to buy from you? It's got to be your own. And when you compare yourself to others, you're influenced by them. Now there's a difference between comparing and learning. You can learn from the greats, you can learn from great entrepreneurs and their journey. But don't compare yourself. That's a quick way to get depressed. I remember I was speaking to a friend after I read Elon Musk's biography, Elon Musk by Ashley Vance. And that's a good book to really feel depressed. If you're going to compare yourself to Elon Musk, the guy has achieved so much and has changed the world in such significant ways, it's going to make any of our businesses look inferior. So instead of trying to compare yourself, learn the things that he has done in his business, in his life and his journey. See how you can apply them in yours. Now, how do you identify if something is a vanity metric or not? Well, it's simple. You just got to ask yourself the question, can you quantify the value of that number of that metric? So, for example, a Twitter follower, what value can you give to a Twitter follower? I can give you a value to an email list subscriber because that's an actual lead. I will pay a certain amount of money to get somebody who's qualified that I can contact that would be interested in my products and services. A Twitter follower, I wouldn't pay money for that. Why? Because I'm easily ignored. I'm in their feed. I can't reach out to them when I want. Followers are very fleeting. So if you can't quantify it and give it value, then you know it's a vanity metric. Now here's some tips to just avoid looking at vanity metrics. Focusing on it get busy building. Get busy improving your products and services, improving how you deliver them, and improving the team that builds it. Make that your priority. One of the things I did that really helped me see the light is I took a social media fast. I'm still on this fast. I just decided, hey, from this point on, I'm not going to use Twitter or Facebook or or any of them social media and see how it affects my business. And in fact, our business grew alright. And now I'm sure it didn't grow because I went on the fast, but it grew despite the fast is what I'm saying. And it shows me that, hey, this stuff doesn't matter. The stuff I was so bogged down about and worried about doesn't matter. And by not engaging in it and not really trying to grow it, it proves that fact. So what did I do with all that time I wasn't on social media? I focused on the things I just mentioned. Improving our product, our service and how we deliver it and the team that delivers it. Team that actually creates these products and services. Spending more time with them, being their leader, being their coach, being their mentor. Remember, time is your biggest asset as an entrepreneur. You can't buy time, can't get it back. So don't spend it focusing on vanity metrics. Another great tip is to focus on your real own metrics and nobody else's. Don't look at anybody else's metrics. Just worry about your own website traffic, your own email list growth, your own sales numbers, your own business growth numbers and compare yourself to your previous month, your previous year. See steady improvement and strive and set your own goals and compare yourself to your previous self, your past self. That's the best way to do it because that's all that matters. Everybody else, it doesn't matter. As long as you're improving and getting better, that's all that counts.

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To wrap up today's lesson, I want to share with you some people I look up to, people that don't use vanity metrics to measure their success. Best selling author, speaker and computer programmer Cal Newport Google this guy, he has zero social profiles. He doesn't even have a profile. Vanity metrics is not in his vocabulary. He, he focuses on what he calls deep work. Actually it's the title of his best selling book, Deep Work. I read this book and it was an absolute game changer for me. Changed the way I thought about work and what I need to focus on. So go down that rabbit hole and Google Cal Newport and see how he works without looking at vanity metrics. The other person I want you to check out is derek sivers@sivers.org Derek Sivers has written multiple best selling books. One of them I absolutely love called Anything youg Want. He's also the founder of CD Baby, which was a huge business that allowed him to retire comfortably after he sold that business. Vanity metrics is something he completely is against. His website, in fact is so simple. No fancy HTML or CSS or JavaScript or anything like that. Yet it's so profound and so popular. So you might be saying, how do these people Stay in touch and network and get to know people well. Derek Sivers is amazing on email, which is more personal and more genuine. And hey, I stayed in touch with everybody. That's important to us and we've grown our business with me being on a social media fast. I fasted from social media From September of 2017 up to today and my goal is to finish the year see the end of 2018 without being on social media. And I told myself I'll reevaluate then. But already my biggest takeaway is staying away from anything that's considered vanity metrics. Whether social media or otherwise has helped me be more focused on what matters in my business. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. We love delivering lessons to you every day, so keep on listening. Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. A few years back, I met a very successful entrepreneur. The guy didn't know social media from multimedia. He had no idea what I'm talking about. When it came to social media, he had no vitamin metrics. In fact, he didn't even have a website. What was his business? He sold the packets that sugar packets are packaged in. So that little paper packet that a sugar packets in, he produced that and would package sugar for sugar suppliers. Such a niche business, Such a unique business. Not sexy at all, but highly successful and doing just fine. Do you think this guy is worried about his Twitter followers? Think this guy's worried about who's following him on Instagram? No. His business is sweet as sugar. Yes, corny but true. Alright guys, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. Check you then. Bye bye.

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