CHAPTER 6
In It to Win It!

Know your metrics, stay consistent, and manage your time well.

#CLEVERGIRLSKNOW

 

LEVERAGING METRICS IN YOUR BUSINESS

One of my favorite parts of managing my business is assessing my metrics! Your business metrics are basically performance indicators that showcase how well your business is doing. This is extremely important because it can help you get a sense of what’s working well (and what’s not), what’s driving sales, and what needs to be adjusted. All of these insights will help you make better business decisions and track your progress, and they can even help you identify problems before they get out of hand.

In my photography business, one of the first metrics I started tracking were the most popular blog post categories on my website. Thanks to this, I found that my rustic wedding photography category was the most-visited category on my website. This gave me insights as to what type of bride my work attracted. Using this knowledge, I focused on showcasing more of these types of pictures on my site, through social media, and in my portfolio albums, which in turn helped me attract more of these brides to generate more revenue.

With Clever Girl Finance, the metrics we track today are much more robust. We track things like page views to determine how many visitors come to our site and what specific content is resonating with our readers; social media engagement to see what our audience is talking about; social media content reach to determine how impactful a brand partnership has been; and month-over-month changes across various metrics categories to see how we are doing overall from a growth perspective.

You can leverage metrics to track pretty much any part of your business that you want to focus on, but there are some metrics that you may need to look at more closely than others. I would suggest tracking and assessing your metrics on a monthly basis.

Financial Metrics

Metrics relating to your business finances, some of which we touched on in the prior chapter on business finances, are really important to understand. Some key financial metrics you’ll want to pay attention to each month include:

  • Fixed costs. These are the costs you need to pay for regardless of how your business is doing and essentially represent your overhead. Tracking these helps you stay aware of any cost increases that happen and gives you a baseline for how much revenue you need to make at a minimum to cover these costs.
  • Variable costs. Your variable costs are typically tied to the creation and production volume of your product and services. Tracking this metric helps you get a sense of if and how your revenue is changing when your variable costs change.
  • Total sales or revenue. This metric is one that every business owner should absolutely be tracking so you are aware of how much money your business is making as a whole from your different products and services.
  • Average sales or revenue. Knowing your average revenue is another metric that is good to track, because you’ll be able to compare your average revenue to your monthly costs to see if your revenue is covering your costs on average each month. Sometimes those high months can be deceiving if you also experience low months, so it’s a good idea to know and track your averages.
  • Sales goals. Knowing what your sales goals are for each month, quarter, or year will help you stay on top of tracking your progress when it comes to all the activities required to make the needed sales.
  • Profit margin. This metric helps you gain a clear picture of what your true profits are when you subtract your expenses from your revenue. The goal is to widen the gap as much as possible between the two, so your revenue exceeds your expenses by a large margin. Tracking this metric will keep you mindful of your expenses and can help you think creatively when it comes to your sales strategies.

Marketing Metrics

Being able to attract your ideal customer means you need to have a marketing strategy in place, and you need metrics to measure the effectiveness of your strategy. Some key marketing metrics that are a good idea to pay attention to include:

  • Customer acquisition rate. This metric measures the rate at which you are acquiring potential customers from specific activities on your various acquisition channels. For instance, how many people signed up to your email list from reading an article on your website, or from visiting your website via your Instagram profile, or from clicking one of your product images on Pinterest? Knowing your acquisition metrics can help you decide on which channel to focus your time and efforts.
  • Conversion rates. This metric is defined as the number of conversions (sales, signups, or other desired actions) divided by the total number of visitors. For instance, you can track the number of sales you make based on the number of visitors to your product or services pages via your different customer acquisition channels. Or you could track the number of your Instagram followers who visited your Instagram shop and made a purchase. You can even use conversion rates to track how effective your Facebook ads are based on the number of sales they return. Knowing your conversion rates can help you fine-tune your marketing strategy.
  • New vs. returning customers. Another good metric to track is your new vs. returning customers. Who is visiting your product or service pages and making purchases? Are you getting a lot of repeat customers? Knowing this metric can help you determine if there is an opportunity to retarget either of these customer categories with ads to incentivize them to make additional purchases.
  • Social media engagement. While this metric does not necessarily translate to sales, it’s worth tracking to get a sense of what your customers are talking about and the questions they are asking. This engagement can also give you a sense of brand loyalty. Social media engagement metrics include things like comments, likes, and shares. The insights you gain can be used to improve your marketing strategy and even your products and services. Take note of anything customers are saying about things they wish your product or service had.

Tools to Track Your Business Metrics

Now that we’ve gone over a baseline list of potential metrics you can track, you are probably wondering exactly how to track each of them. One great way to keep it all in one place is to create a simple spreadsheet that has a list of the metrics you want to track each month.

You can pull metrics from your business budget and from the various analytics and insights features available today on each of the social media platforms. For example, you can leverage the “insights” section of your account on Instagram and the “analytics” section on Pinterest to pull specific metrics you want to track each month.

Another incredibly powerful and free tool that you can use to track how customers are using your website is Google Analytics. This powerful tool can help you analyze your website traffic, which is incredibly important because your website is your home base. You can track the actions visitors take on your website (pages visited, landing pages, exit pages, time spent), gain insights about the demographics of your visitors (age, location, interests, etc.), and even set sales and revenue goals tied to specific products or services on your Google Analytics account. I highly recommend using Google Analytics—it’s totally worth the time it takes to set it up for your business website. Google offers a great tutorial for beginners on using Google Analytics, which you can find at https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy.

As I’ve mentioned, tracking your metrics can help you gain some really good insights to help you increase your sales and grow your business. However, there are a ton of metrics you could potentially track, and you don’t want this process to become overwhelming or stressful. Decide on the metrics that are core to achieving your business goals and start there.

Take Action

Now that you know the importance of tracking your business metrics, get started with yours.

  • Create a list of metrics most relevant to your business goals to begin tracking. Keep in mind that you don’t need to track every single metric available, just the ones that are most relevant or impactful to your business right now. You can always add on others later.
  • Organize the metrics you want to track in a spreadsheet by month over the next 12 months. To make it easier, you can set this up as a separate tab, or “sheet,” next to your business budget spreadsheet if you are using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
  • Set up your Google Analytics accounts for your website. If you are unsure how to do this, check out the free tutorials Google offers at https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy.
  • Dedicate time each month to review the metrics you are tracking. Pay close attention to any trends you see and make a note of any key actions you took throughout each month that affected your metrics. Use this information to brainstorm ideas to grow your future revenue.

MANAGING YOUR TIME: TIPS AND TOOLS TO HELP

As a business owner, time is one of your most valuable assets, especially if you are starting your business as a side hustle on top of your full-time job and other obligations (kids, family, life!). Since you’re a busy woman, you want to make sure that you are spending your time on the right types of activities—activities that will make you money.

Unfortunately, many business owners end up spending way too much time figuring out administrative tasks or getting distracted from the core of their business by the next pretty, shiny object so that they eventually find themselves feeling overwhelmed. Their business becomes a burden and is no longer the exciting project they were eager to work on every day. However, that’s not going to be you, because in this section, we are going to walk through how you can create a plan to help better manage the limited time you have. We’ll also go over the types of tools you can leverage to help you minimize the stress.

Your time management has a direct impact on your business finances. The more effectively you can get your administrative and other tasks done, especially the recurring ones, the more time you can spend doing the things you love in your business and, of course, making money!

Creating a Schedule

The first thing you need to do to effectively manage your time is to identify all the different aspects of your business that you need to work on in order to make money and grow. Once you have this list, you can then research and plan the steps required to execute each aspect, assign time on your schedule for each step, leverage tools to automate certain areas, and determine what areas you’ll need to delegate or hire for over time.

Some examples of the different tasks and responsibilities in your business include:

  • Administrative tasks. Business metrics, research, emails, website management, product and service development, etc.
  • Financial tasks. Budgeting, expense tracking, taxes, invoicing and payments, other bookkeeping, etc.
  • Sales and marketing. Email marketing, blog posts, videos, podcasts, social media content, running webinars or workshops, etc.
  • Customer service and management. Communications, purchase and returns management, product shipments, service delivery, gathering feedback and testimonials, etc.
  • Partnerships and collaborations. Onboarding affiliates, brand partnerships, joint promotions, etc.

The steps you assign on your schedule could be daily (social media posting), weekly (newsletters, blog posts), monthly (metrics, budgeting), quarterly (specific sales campaigns), and perhaps even annually (reviewing annual subscriptions and services). The whole idea is to identify the task you need to work on and assign a specific time to get it done so you can focus on other areas of your business and life.

Tools to Help You Save Time and Money

Certain types of tools can be incredibly helpful to ensuring you are managing your business in the most effective way. These tools will save you time and potentially help earn you lots of money.

I’m going to share some of my favorites here (at the time of this writing) but be sure to do your own research, ask other business owners, and find what works best for you, as there are constant improvements with existing tools and new tools are always being released.

Tips for Making the Most of Your Time

As you lay out your tasks, make a schedule, and begin to experiment with tools to make your life easier, here are six key tips to help you make the most of your time:

  1. Plan ahead by creating a schedule for your day, week, and month.
  2. Prioritize your tasks in order of importance or urgency.
  3. Delegate tasks as often as you can.
  4. Leverage tools to help you automate tasks.
  5. Assess how each day and week went, noting areas you’d like to change or improve.
  6. Eliminate distractions while you work, for instance, by muting social media and alerts.

Take Action

Effectively manage your time by identifying and prioritizing the various tasks that need to be done in your business.

  • Write down a list of all the different kinds of responsibilities in your business, as well as the required steps you need to complete for each task. A simple spreadsheet is a great place to manage this.
  • Build the various steps into your schedule based on how often they occur (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually).
  • Make a note of areas you need to delegate or would like to hire for.

WHO DO YOU NEED ON YOUR TEAM?

When I first started Clever Girl Finance as a side hustle, I was a team of me, myself, and yours truly. I was working full-time, mothering my twin toddlers, and trying to grow my side hustle. As a team of one, it meant that I did it all. Not only was I the CEO and sole decision maker, I was also the content creator, the receptionist, the assistant, the social media manager, and the intern. Add that onto my full-time corporate job and the jobs I did for my family as a driver, cook, cleaning and laundry lady, teacher, and more—I had a lot going on.

Needless to say, I was in a perpetual cycle of exhaustion. I wasn’t in a position to pay anyone from a business that was not yet making money, and I was trying to figure out how to make my side hustle work. But despite it all, it was an incredibly exciting time for me. I was doing something different than what I did every day at my corporate job, and it was something that was very meaningful to me. I was also enjoying the process of working through all the different ideas I had, and I was learning so much.

There were many sleepless nights and sometimes I felt overwhelmed, but the experience of starting out solo and figuring out how to make it work was worthwhile. I gained valuable experience working through all the different aspects of my business, learning what I didn’t know, figuring out how to make things work, and identifying the areas where I would eventually need help.

As you are reading this, you might be in a similar position—you have so much going on in your life and on top of it all, you are trying to start or run a side hustle on your own. The value in starting out this way, however, is that you get the opportunity to work through all the aspects of your business. Even if you aren’t an expert in certain areas, you’ll figure out enough to get by in the interim, then hire and train someone to support you when the time comes. Because if you stick with it and are able to get your business on its feet, there will come a time when you’ll be able to start hiring people and assembling your team.

Getting Ready to Expand Your Team

With Clever Girl Finance, it took me two and a half years to get to the point where I was able to make my first permanent hire. Prior to that two-and-a-half-year mark, I was able to hire contractors for the one-off jobs I needed to be done, and I made it work that way. This is an option you can leverage as well.

As you start to think about where you need help and how to find the right resources, here are some things to keep in mind based on my experiences and lessons learned.

  • Identify where you need support. Based on the different aspects of your business you laid out in the previous section and the specific steps required to complete each category and task, identify where you need help the most and prioritize that need. Do you need a designer, a social media manager, an assistant, a writer, a developer? This exercise will help you get clear on where you have the most pressing need.
  • Create a job requirement. Based on this, create a job requirement of the skill set the ideal candidate would need to have in order to support you successfully in this role.
  • Take your time to hire. Ever heard the saying hire slow but fire fast? Well, it rings true. When you take your time to hire by going through an interview process with potential candidates, taking time to determine if they are a good fit for your brand, checking their references, and speaking with them at least a couple of times, you are less likely to have hiring regrets. It’s definitely true that sometimes even if you’ve done your due diligence, things don’t work out, but by taking your time to make your decision, you can minimize your chances of a bad hire.
  • Have hiring contracts in place. It’s also really important to have a contractual agreement in place for anyone you hire so the terms of their employment are clear. This contract should clearly highlight any trial periods (I’d highly recommend at least a 30-trial period), payment terms, working hours, and the job description.
  • Hire on a contract basis until you can hire part-time or full-time. As I mentioned, prior to my being able to hire a permanent position for Clever Girl Finance, I needed help in certain areas, so I hired on a per-job/contract basis. It worked well for me based on my business budget at the time. Even if you can only hire on an as-needed basis, it can make a huge difference in getting tasks done, especially if you are working on a tight timeline.
  • Set the right expectations. Once you’ve hired who you need, it’s important to set the right expectations from the beginning of their working relationship with you, even if you’ve only hired on a per-job basis. Take the time to train and communicate with them often. And be sure to provide them with feedback as time progresses, giving them time to learn your workflow and improve their work if necessary. Keep in mind that there is a chance that things might not work out. In this scenario, it’s important that you let the person know and cut your losses as soon as possible.

The Value of Business Peers and Mentors

As a business owner, having a support system is incredibly important. While your friends and family can try to support you along the way, what they can offer tends to be more “moral support” than practical guidance. Having business peers going through the same entrepreneurial journey and mentors who have business experience can be extremely helpful, especially when you are trying to figure things out, navigating a difficult period in business, or experiencing amazing growth and need some support or guidance. They can also be the ones to encourage and give you the push you need to take the next big step in your business that might be outside of your comfort zone.

In my personal experience, I’ve found that building a business can be very isolating and lonely. And having a peer to talk through a situation and to encourage and motivate you can make a huge difference. While your business peers might be at different stages of their journey, the one thing you have in common is that you are traveling a similar path, and that alone can make the whole experience less lonely. Your peers can share their experiences, provide suggestions, and even be the test subjects for your products and services!

Having experienced mentors (or in a formal role, advisors), on the other hand, can provide you with specific advice and guidance based on their own business experiences, including their successes and failures. Depending on their industry experience and connections, they can also be great motivators and can help with making key business introductions. You can also have multiple mentors that support you in different areas of your business. For instance, you can have a mentor who has deep marketing experience and another who has experience with product development.

How Do You Find Business Peers and Mentors?

Finding business peers and mentors is all about relationship building: meeting people and spending time getting to know them. One way to start is within your personal network. Once you get intentional about seeking out peers and mentors, you may be surprised about who you are already connected to within your network.

For instance, some of your friends, acquaintances, or former colleagues may have business ideas or might have even started businesses they have not shared broadly. One of my amazing mentors is actually a former boss of mine who just happens to be a serial entrepreneur with an in-depth knowledge of business strategy and development. But funnily enough, I had no idea about his experience. It wasn’t until a couple of years after I left that particular job and was talking to a former coworker about starting a business that they suggested I get reconnected with this particular mentor, and I’m so grateful they made that suggestion.

Another way to seek out peers and mentors is through introductions from people you are connected to. I can’t tell you how many new entrepreneur friends I’ve made from other people introducing me to people within their network, many of whom I am still constantly in touch with.

You can also make time to participate in entrepreneur-focused events (online and in-person), participate in entrepreneur communities and groups, and even engage with other entrepreneurs on social media. Thanks to the internet and the evolution of social interactions online, it’s become so much easier to meet other people. However, it’s going to require that you are intentional, and you might need to step out of your comfort zone, especially if you are somewhat introverted like me.

Sometimes it’s a challenge for me to meet people, but I make the effort. It helps to do things like add reminders to my calendars or send the introduction request email or text message before I can talk myself out of it!

Finally, you might decide to hire a coach to guide you through certain aspects of building your business. If you choose to go this route, be sure to do your research to make sure they can truly help you, have the experience, and very importantly, that they are a good fit for your personality and style.

Take Action

Let’s work on identifying who you need on your team and finding business peers and mentors!

  • If you are looking to hire someone to support your business, review the specific aspects of your business and identify the key tasks where you need assistance. Use this information to create a job description that clearly defines the role, even if you are only hiring on a per-job basis to start with. You can put the word out through your personal network, your business audience/community, by asking for referrals from people you know, or by making a job post on an online freelance platform like fiverr.com, upwork.com, etc. Be sure to take your time when it comes to vetting each potential candidate.
  • If you are looking for business peers or mentors, create another description that highlights specifically how you’d like a mentor to support you. Start with your personal network and ask for introductions from people you are connected to already. You should also seek out and join entrepreneur communities (they could be within your niche and industry) and build relationships that way.

MEET EMILIE ARIES

Emilie Aries is an author, CEO, and founder, speaker, and podcast host. After rising quickly in the world of campaigns and elections as a grassroots organizer and digital strategist, she launched the award-winning personal and professional development company Bossed Up (www.bossedup.com) in 2013.

Today, Emilie and the Bossed Up team provide research-driven, impact-oriented training programs both online and in-person to serve their ambitious community of women who crave the tools and tactics to assertively advocate for the careers and lives they want. She is based in Denver, Colorado, and combines her political past and personal experience with burnout to help others step into their power and be the boss of their careers and lives.

You lead a busy life running multiple businesses. What time management and money-saving tools and processes have you implemented to maximize the time you have available to run the various aspects of your businesses?

I live and die by my Google calendar, which my entire team has access to. I use it to block out time for recurring tasks I know I need to make a priority each week, including my own financial reflections and projections, management tasks like biweekly reviews for all my staff, and creative tasks like writing, podcasting, and recording social media content. I also believe in the power of batching work: for example, I try my best to consolidate client coaching calls and program trainings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, while reserving Mondays and Fridays for more administrative, management, and big-picture strategy work. By reducing my switching costs, I find I’m able to be more focused and productive on those public-facing days while making space to be more creative and free-wheeling on “backstage” days with my team.

I also use Calendly, which cuts down on wasted time emailing back and forth to schedule calls. It shares my availability (with boundaries on my time that I set) with my clients and partners who can schedule one-on-one calls with me. It’s been a huge time-saver and really made those long email chains trying to find the best time for both of us a thing of the past.

When it comes to big-picture planning and goal-setting, I struggled to find a good system out there. So, after years of studying the science of sustaining motivation, I collaborated with cognitive scientists and academic researchers who study gender and role overload to develop my own planner and goal-tracking system specifically designed to help ambitious women mitigate guilt. We started testing our method, which I call the LifeTracker Planner, back in 2013 at every single Bossed Up Bootcamp. After years of testing and refining it, today we now have a worldwide community of women who thrive as they strive alongside me each and every year using our planner.

One of the best strategies inherent to this method is highlighting: the temporary prioritization of one area of your life over another. This means first setting goals across work, love, wellness, and other areas of life (which can be anything but often includes personal finance, travel, or artistic goals) and then highlighting—or choosing—just one area of life to make your priority that month. I can’t tell you how liberating it is to be able to proactively say, “I’m not making my health and wellness goals my top priority this month. My financial goals take precedence.” The reality is: all our goals are important. But rarely are any of them truly urgent. By highlighting, you’re creating a self-imposed sense of urgency that only lasts one month. So, it kind of forces you to make those trade-offs ahead of time so you don’t feel guilty when life happens and you have to make tough choices about where to spend your limited time and energy anyway.

What kinds of metrics do you leverage in your business, and how do metrics play a part in your business earnings and growth?

We set financial projections that serve as our primary benchmarks: total number of unique clients and gross revenue. All other KPIs (key performance indicators) are related to lead generation: unique website visits, consultation calls scheduled, email list subscribers, podcast downloads (listens), and followers on social media. Those are indicators of new prospective clients, but what we’re mostly focused on is converting our passive browsers into buyers. That requires continued creative energy put toward increasing our conversion rates on our landing pages and communication channels. We’re constantly experimenting with new marketing channels and website landing page improvements to try and increase our conversion rates and new client acquisition. At the start of the pandemic in early 2020, most of our creative energy was put toward new product development as we converted our entire business model to something scalable in a remote environment. But once we developed new products and services, we refocused our attention on marketing and client acquisition.

You have remained consistent year after year in business. What has helped you get through difficult times?

I have remained resilient, sure, but I wouldn’t say consistent. My business has taken many forms over the past seven years, constantly evolving and changing along the way. They say necessity is the mother of all innovation, and that’s been true for me. I bootstrapped my business and have never taken on any investment or loans (until the PPP SBA loan program in 2020). So, I’ve had to remain agile in order to keep my lights on and continue to operate at a profit. Looking back, I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but I was committed to learning and evolving along the way. I remained open to trial and error as a teacher, and have learned so much through putting in serious sweat equity and countless hours. Now, seven years in, I feel much more confident in my business prowess. Once you learn the fundamentals of starting, growing, and running one business, you can start any business. You can learn those fundamentals in theory in school, sure, but you can also learn them through trial and error. My educational background in political science and cognitive science taught me a lot about people, human motivation, systems, and persuasion, all of which have served me well. But I learned business one real-world win or loss at a time. Some of those mistakes along the way have been very costly, but nothing insurmountable. The reason I’ve stuck with this business, in particular, is because I’ve pursued the kind of work that feels inevitable to me, it feels like an extension of who I am. Bossed Up feels so fully and entirely aligned with how I want to show up in this world, I don’t think I’d do anything else, even if I won the lottery tomorrow. I followed my passion, and I’ve worked hard to find a way to make it yield my own paycheck. I created the community I needed myself.

What advice would you give someone starting a side hustle about thinking long-term, time management, and perseverance?

If you’re going to start your own business, you might as well go for the business you really want to start. Don’t just pursue a side hustle for the money. You have to be in it because you’re obsessed with the industry or subject matter or your vision. The money matters, of course, but it’s secondary. The money won’t keep you going when things are tough: your belief in your vision and your ability to make a meaningful impact will. Be willing to put in the time, energy, and effort up-front. Once you’ve proven your concept, then focus on how to make things more scalable, manageable, and sustainable. Starting is hard—but it’s just the first step.

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