How to stay focused on what really matters in your business

This is episode #17 of The Goodness Squad podcast. I am going to be using the example of dehydrated water to help you understand an issue that you are likely facing, and don’t even realize that it’s slowing your progress in your business.

What is dehydrated water?

Let’s jump in to talking about dehydrated water. I don’t remember if we were given this, or if we gave it away first, but this is an item that went back and forth in different white elephant exchanges in my family for many years.

A can of dehydrated water.

Now, if you haven’t caught on already, dehydrated water is just air. Because if something’s dehydrated, you have to add water to hydrate it. So a can of dehydrated water is just air. It is nothing, it’s a facade. But what if you didn’t realize that? What if you stocked up on a whole bunch of cans of dehydrated water, instead of filling your 55-gallon water barrel with real water?

Some of you probably know that my last website was all about emergency preparedness, and I got this question two different times, so that’s not a ton, but there were real people who asked me this question, “Where do I get those cans of dehydrated water?” I want to show you how this relates to your content marketing business.

Don’t focus on the wrong things

Real water is life. We cannot live without water for more than a few days. There are things in our business that keep us alive. But, unfortunately, many people focus on things in their business that do not keep them alive. In other words, they stock up on cans of dehydrated water.

So what am I talking about? I’m talking about things like customers purchasing from you. That is not dehydrated water. That is something that is really important to the lifeblood of your business. When I talk about business success, or the lifeblood of your business, I mean:

1. income
2. impact

I am not talking about just income. I am talking about your ability to earn income for yourself and your ability to spread goodness and light with others. Email subscribers, social media followers, traffic shares, comments, likes. Do you see how the further down the list, the more these things become like dehydrated water?

If all your business ever had was a whole bunch of likes on every social media post you’ve ever put out there, yeah, it feels really popular, but you wouldn’t be profitable and it’s very unlikely you would be making a real impact in anyone’s business. It’s a facade. It’s not true success.

The danger, and the very common mistake, is to focus on those numbers in your business as the measure of your success. You will hear these things out in the marketing world called vanity metrics. It’s a metric where you’re seeking popularity or likes. It makes you feel popular over something that is truly going to speak to the success of your business.

Examples of vanity metrics

Followers

Let’s look at a few examples that might help you understand this concept better. If I have a certain number of followers on my business and they’re just followers inside my Instagram account, but they never ever comment – Am I going to earn income from those people? No. And am I going to impact those people? If no one’s ever engaging with me, am I actually impacting them? No. So should I be measuring followers or comments?

Website Traffic

What about traffic? What if I had 100k people come to my website every single month? I have known people in this situation.  You’re looking at a million people in a year, right? That’s a lot of people. But what if all they do is come once because I never invite them to join my email list? So later that year, when I have a product to tell them about, they’re all gone. So does the traffic itself really matter? No. Not unless you convert that into an email subscriber. If all you’re doing is measuring traffic, you’re not going to get very far.

Email Subscribers

Let’s take email subscribers. So now you’ve got them on your list. But what if that’s all you do is get them on your list and you don’t worry about anything from then on out? Then email subscribers can become a vanity metric as well.

What if I have 10,000 people on my email list, but only a hundred of them on average open my emails. Am I going to have much impact and income? Nope. What about if I do get those people to open my emails. So now of the 10,000, 5,000 are opening my emails, but only 20 are clicking?

Using Conversion Rates to Measure Success

We see where we really need to dig deep into what is that 55-gallon water barrel full of? A lot of people talk about conversion. So I’ve talked about converting a visitor to your website, into an email subscriber. I’ve talked about converting an email subscriber into somebody who clicks and then converting that click into somebody who purchases.

If you want to learn more about what these conversions are, you can go back to episode #2, where it’s titled Double Your Income. I talk about how, if we can focus on one conversion at a time, it’s not that all of these conversions are unimportant and the only one we should focus on is what people purchase, but we need to get deeper and deeper.

When you change something in your business, let’s say you decide you want more Instagram followers. If the only metric you measure is how many followers you get? That’s a vanity metric.

But if you look toward the next step and you make this change and you get more followers, does it also increase the number of comments? You could get new followers through like/unlike or through a crazy giveaway that has nothing to do with what you teach. And those followers are never going to engage with you, and they’re not going to benefit your business. And they’re not going to benefit from what you’re teaching because they don’t care about it.

So you need to measure that next metric. If somebody becomes a follower, do my comments also increase? Then if you have a goal to increase comments, great, your comments have increased, but are you actually seeing anybody then click on the link in your profile? Go to your website? If that’s not also increasing, then you’re doing something wrong.

If you get people to click on that link in your profile, where are you sending them? So you get more clicks, but what’s happening on the other end of that click? Are you getting more email subscribers? Great. Then you’re doing a good job, but if not, then it’s just a vanity metric.

How to solve the vanity metrics problem

Not everything is a vanity metric, if used correctly. So to be very clear, anytime you make a change in your business, anytime you have a goal, no matter what that goal is, I want you to track the next step. Not just what the goal is. I want you to also track the next step.

So if you are tracking ‘more clicks,’ is what you’re doing also getting people to then purchase more? I hope that makes sense for you. I want you to think about this from a scriptural standpoint as well. So in 2 Nephi 28:30, we learn that God teaches us line upon line, precept upon precept. You are not going to get somebody to go from cold, just having met you, just starting to follow you on Instagram to buying your most expensive product. So you do have to focus on all of these mini conversions.

The problem that I see sometimes online is people say, “Oh, don’t focus on vanity metrics,” and everybody thinks you’re only supposed to focus on purchases. Not true. You’re supposed to focus on whatever is currently a vanity metric for you in your business. And if all you’re focusing on is likes and not how that’s converting into the next step, then that is a vanity metric for you.

Get them to take the next step

So, how do you get people to take that next step with you? How do you teach them and move them through your business line upon line, precept upon precept, step by step through your business?

Stop focusing on just one step at a time and focus on at least two, if not three, steps through your business at a time. And when you make a change, does it affect the steps that come further down the line? In summary, I want you to stop patting yourself on the back for all that dehydrated water you have in your business. And I want you to start focusing on the things that will make a real change in your business. I want you to get yourself more email subscribers, more opens, more purchases.

I want your business to grow in income and impact. And if you do this, if you stop focusing on just one metric at a time and making it into a vanity metric, but you start focusing on the next steps beyond that one, whichever one you’re focused on, your business will start growing. You will be less burnt out. You will have a greater impact on people because you’re constantly encouraging them to take that next step with you. And you will earn more income.

I want you to know that at this point right now in early June 2020, my business has actually been active for just under five months. I have less than 200 people on my email list and I earned $5,000 last month. And it’s because I follow this principle. Those 200 people are moving from one step to the next, which eventually leads to them purchasing things from me because they know, like, and trust me. And because they’re ready for the next step, they’re qualified for it. Implement this in your business and it will make a big, big difference for you.

A Resource to help you track Your Conversion

If you’d like help figuring out how to track all these different conversions and metrics in your business, I’d like to invite you to join my Tech School. It hasn’t officially launched yet.  I have a group of founders who are helping me put this together so that it is a truly quality product when it launches in early September of 2020. But you can get on the waiting list. So you can go to TheGoodnessSquad.com/tech-school. I will put that link in the notes as well.

Once you sign up, you will have access to my entire library of free resources while you wait for Tech School to launch. 

Coming Up

Next week, I am going to be sharing a super simple tip that made it much easier for me to find images for my social media posts and my blog posts and all the images that I needed anywhere in my business. It will save you time. I believe that a minute saved in your business is $10 earned.