220: Breaking Up With Tracking: When Tracking Turn Toxic
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Brandi: [00:00:00] I usually find that service providers fall in one or two categories. Either they shy away from numbers and can't stand them, so they don't track anything. or they're obsessed with them and they are tracking every little detail in their business or maybe their client's business. Well today it's all about cutting through the noise and the data points when it comes to tracking and rather than using it as a trap that keeps you stuck, I want you to use tracking as a tool to move your business forward no matter if it's for yourself or for your client.
So in this episode, we're going to find that sweet spot where effective tracking maximizes efficiency without burning you out or overwhelming you. And we're going to put together a strategic plan of the KPIs you need in your service based business, but also [00:01:00] how to implement those into your business to where it's not a daily thing.
It's a weekly, a monthly activity. That doesn't take a lot of time to implement and keeps you focused on how to move your business forward. So if you're ready to learn how to love tracking and not get overwhelmed with it and not track too much and stay in analysis paralysis, this episode's for you. So let's jump on in.
Welcome back to another episode of the Serve, Scale, Soar podcast, the go to place if you want to start, grow, or scale your ad management business. My name is Brandi Mowles, and today we're going to be talking about when tracking actually hurts your business. We hear all the time, track, track, track. And I'm a girl that loves some numbers, but does there come a time where tracking is actually hurting your business instead of helping it?
That's what I want to dive into today, but before we really dive [00:02:00] into that, I want to tell you just why this came about and why, why I really realized that tracking is not always the best and how we can really use tracking that's most effective. And this is something I learned from my personal life that we've always done in our business, But I never realized that we were doing it.
And so it's so funny how sometimes things that happen in our personal life affect our business, or we're really good about doing something in one side of our life or business, but then that doesn't translate to the other piece. And in this case, I was always really good at it with my business. But I was struggling in my personal life and it caused a point of burnout.
And so I want to go over how you can see if you're doing this in your business and how we can course correct. So you're only tracking the things that really matter.
In February, I really hit a place in my life where I was [00:03:00] like, Oh my gosh, I am so done with tracking. And where this came from was that I was tracking macros. I work with a coach and I was tracking macros. And during that time to get the most data points, we were tracking protein, carbs. fat, fiber, daily water intake, amount of steps and then whatever exercise I was doing.
And most of this is done in my fitness pal. It's not like I'm tracking these individually. But what had happened is I got to a point where in my weight, of course, I was tracking my weight. I got to a point where I was like, I'm done. Screw this. I'm giving up. I don't want to do this anymore. And it didn't come from a place of I don't want to track macros.
It came from a place where I'm just sick of tracking everything to do with my body. Because then when I thought about it before getting pregnant with Bodie, I had worked with a macros coach for six [00:04:00] months and we loved it. We were doing it, but then I got pregnant and because of my pregnancy with Riley, I had to track my blood pressure.
And so I was tracking my blood pressure every day. And then of course, when you're pregnant, they check your weight and they're checking all these vitals. But from a daily standpoint, I was checking my blood pressure. Then When they said, okay, you're good. You don't need to check your blood pressure anymore.
I was still in the pregnancy. You're tracking weight weeks and all that kind of stuff. And then I had failed my gestational diabetes test, not failed it, but I went into sugar shock with the drink one, which doesn't mean that you have gestational diabetes, but I refused to take the test again. So with that, I had to track my blood sugar through the rest of my pregnancy.
And Five times a day, I'm having to check my sugar. So I'm tracking that. And then once Bodie was born, I was tracking my milk supply because I'm not an overproducer. I'm just enough. So I'm tracking my milk supply to make sure he's getting enough [00:05:00] and all of that. And then soon as I was done breastfeeding, I went straight back into tracking macros and that was in November.
And so November, December, January, I went straight back into tracking my macros and At the end of January, I just had a breaking point where I was like, I'm done. I'm so sick of tracking. Cause it was like for two years of my life, I'd been tracking something with my body. And I stepped back and I told my coach I needed a break.
I was like, I don't know when I'm ready to come back, but I know I just need a break. Like I need to not track. And so he said, okay as soon as, And I like went from tracking all these things to tracking nothing. And soon as that happened I, my pants started feeling a little bit tighter. So I stepped on the scale and I saw it going up and I was like, oh man.
And also I saw my exercise declining and I was like, what the heck? So when I was tracking everything, I was so [00:06:00] overwhelmed and just burnout and done. When I was tracking nothing, things started to go. Wayward and so I sat there in that moment. I was like And I was like, where's the happy medium for me?
Where do I feel good about tracking and where can I get to this? Cause I do this in my business. I'm really good about this in my business, but for some reason around my weight and all that, like it's all or nothing always has been. And I was like, I want to change this behavior. I want to change this pattern.
And one of the great things about the health coach I'm working with is that's And she focuses on. She's a good friend of mine and she paired me with one of her coaches, but our coaches focus on behavioral change instead of just like eating healthy and stuff like that. And so I said, you know what? I can make this change.
Let me figure out what numbers I need to track in order to be successful. And so what we landed on was your fat carbs, Protein, but with a caveat, [00:07:00] if I go out to eat, I don't track. So that also encourages us to eat at home more, but also it takes the stress out of eating out. The other thing is I didn't want to track my steps anymore.
I was like, I walk around the block three miles pretty much every day. So I don't want to track that. I know that I drink enough water cause that's all I drink. And so I don't want to track my water. I took off my Apple watch. I didn't want to have that telling me like, Oh, you need to go take some steps so the only thing I was like, I'm going to track is how much exercise I do per week and I'll do that in my Peloton app so I get credit for it. I'm going to track my fat, carbs, and protein, but if we eat out, I'm not going to. And my weight, that was it. So those are the things that mattered.
And so with that being said, and then once every four weeks, I would track my measurements.
So we went from tracking all the things, to tracking nothing, to then tracking somewhere in the middle. That was a heavy median, and that really dictates where I need to be.
And so once I [00:08:00] got to that place, I was like, Oh, this feels good. Let's test it out. And now I have been losing weight. I've felt better mentally, physically. And so I was thinking about this and I was like, wow, tracking was really hurting me from a personal level, from a mental level, because I was tracking too much.
And then once I wasn't tracking at all, it was hurting me. Because things started going in the direction I didn't want. But once I found that happy median that gave me the numbers that I'd needed to hit my goals without overwhelming me or causing burnout, it's been smooth sailing and I started to reflect on that.
I was like, wow, I do this in my business. I've always been someone who only focuses on a few KPIs. I don't have this crazy dashboard or anything like that. When We focus on a few things and as long as those things are moving in the right direction, I know the rest of the business is moving in the right direction.
For some reason I wasn't as skilled at doing that in my [00:09:00] personal life and I have a feeling some of you listening may be under or over tracking in your business. So you're not getting the results that you want. So what I want to do today is break down what you actually need to track and how over tracking or under tracking can actually be detrimental to your business.
So if you're ready to learn exactly what you need to track in your business, let's dive on in.
So when we talk about over or under tracking, it's really easy to know if we're under tracking because that means you're like, usually you're not tracking anything. Like you're that person who doesn't like to look at numbers. And I'm sorry, but if you own a business, you have and at your numbers because you can't measure what you don't know.
Like you really truly have to look at your numbers and if you're not good at numbers, that's okay. But you do have to look at numbers. And the way I set this up is you're only looking at a few numbers. Now, overtracking is a little bit, [00:10:00] sometimes a little bit more. hard to identify because you're like how do I know if I'm overtracking?
Like I need these numbers. These are all data points. So first, before we jump into like, how can you only focus on the right KPIs? I want us to figure out like, are you overtracking? And the common symptoms of overtracking is when you spend an excessive time on analytics, especially for my ad managers, my funnel.
I'm going to be talking about my funnel managers, my funnel builders, my social media managers. If you're spending excessive time on analytics, you're probably overtracking and this can be analytics for your own business or for your clients. So an example of this is I know an ad manager and she used to create these super elaborate reports for her clients and it would take hours to create reports for every single client.
So clients don't want that. They don't want all that information. They're not looking at all of [00:11:00] it. And ultimately it's probably not actually serving you because that leads to the second symptom which is decision paralysis. When we have too many data points or we're looking at too many data points, we usually get into decision paralysis where we can actually make a decision because we have too much information and we don't know which one's actually the most important.
So when we're looking at too much data and we're spending all this time analyzing it, then we usually don't make decisions moving forward. So an example of this for your service based business is if you're like tracking every single social media platform, like if you're like, okay, what did we do on YouTube?
What did we do on LinkedIn? What did we do on Instagram? What did we do on Facebook? And you're trying to look at all these because you're trying to be everywhere. Chances are you're in decision. Prelis is because you don't know what to do, which one's actually moving the needle forward [00:12:00] or you're spending way too much time analyzing this one.
That really doesn't matter. So if you feel like you are spending hours creating reports or looking at your data and analyzing it or you're in decision, Paralysis, like you don't know what you should do, then you're probably over tracking. Another symptom of over tracking is when you are someone who tracks, but you're feeling overwhelmed.
You're like, I have all these numbers, but I don't know what to do, and I'm so overwhelmed. And we have an episode coming up for y'all in two weeks on how to turn overwhelm into action. But if you're feeling that sense of overwhelm, you could be tracking. I was tracking too much like me with my health journey, I was tracking too much and it was overwhelming.
Then if you find yourself really being stuck in inefficiency, like you're spending so much time on one or multiple things, like you're spending too much time on creative, you're spending too much time on copy, [00:13:00] you're spending too much time on client acquisition, you're spending too much time in strategy development.
And Chances are it's because you're overanalyzing everything and you're using too many data points to actually go where you need to go, which can also be a symptom of when you're losing sight of your business goals. You are getting frustrated. You're making decisions based on short term data instead of long term data.
I see this a lot with ad managers too, making decisions about ad performance too quickly. And also with our businesses saying that something doesn't work. Maybe you tried cold emailing and you sent 30 and you haven't heard back. You don't have enough data points, Chad, until you send a hundred emails, you don't have enough data points.
So maybe you're losing sight of the big picture of this is not a quick overnight thing. Business takes time. And so you're making decisions based on data that isn't what you should be [00:14:00] looking at, or it's too short amount of time. And then of course, all of this leads to inefficiency. And I am the efficiency queen. I love efficiency, but I also see people who are really efficient, but they spend way too much time in the data. And when we do that and we find ourselves being like, I don't have enough time in the day because I'm looking at this and this and this and this, you're probably using that data as a distraction from doing what can actually move your business forward.
So those are some of the symptoms. So spending an excessive time on analytics, feeling overwhelmed, not focused on your business goals, decision paralysis, inefficiencies. If you're struggling with all of these, you may be tracking too much in your business or even with your ad clients or your funnel clients or your social media management clients.
Usually when we over or under track in one area, we do that in other areas as [00:15:00] well.
And the problem is with overtracking, just like I told you on my health journey, it was leading to burnout and emotional distress. The same thing can happen when we're under or overtracking. We can, one, it's going to keep us stuck because we don't know what data points to look at. Two, we can burn out and lose passion for why we started this.
Because we are so focused on the numbers instead of focusing on the long term goal. Just like I did with my health. And when I was getting to the point of burnout, I was about to let all of that fall to the side because I was so focused on the tracking.
And so sometimes when we get stuck in the tracking, the data, the analytics, then we lose passion for why we even started this business in the first place. It leads to inefficiencies, which we talked about. You lose focus. Like when you're focused on only data, you lose focus on the things that actually matter and move your business forward.
[00:16:00] And it may even cause client dissatisfaction. Because if you're sending them these reports that take forever for them to review or you're so stuck in the data and you're picking the nitty gritty and then you're telling them about it and they don't care, that can cause a lot of client dissatisfaction.
I was talking to someone the other day and they were like, my ad manager just blows me up every single day with reports and I don't care. Just give me a weekly report. And so that can actually hinder your client's satisfaction with you. So now that we have really identified like the symptoms and what the consequences of over or under tracking is, now I want to give you some practical tips as always for one The right KPIs for your business.
And how we can implement a focus tracking strategy. So you don't burn out in your business. So let's start with the [00:17:00] KPIs. When we're talking about a service based business, the most important KPIs that we need to focus on, one is what is your revenue goal?
And then once we have our revenue goal, we just need to figure out like how many clients that's going to take. You don't really have to track that. It's just a number to know. And then, but how many sales calls do we need to hit in order to get that many clients? So we're tracking the revenue, we're tracking our sales call goal or your discovery call.
And then from there how many discovery calls do we need to hold that month in order to land? our client. And from there, that is tracking your discovery call conversion rate. But you can set that up to auto track. If you're doing this in a google sheet or something you can set that up. So it automatically figures that out for you But let's say you're at 50 That means that for every two calls you do you get a client so we're gonna automatically track that conversion rate, but I want you to focus on How much revenue are you bringing in?
How many calls [00:18:00] are you doing? Because that's how you're going to get it. And then how many people are you reaching out to in order to get those calls? And once you start tracking that number of how many people you're reaching out to, you'll be able to see Oh, every 25 people that I reach out to, I book one call.
Then you'll know great, so now I know to book two calls, I need to reach out to 50 people, and I'll have my two calls, and then you can track how many people you're talking to. So when we look at what we're tracking each month, we're tracking our revenue, we're tracking our discovery calls, we're tracking our outreach.
And then the fourth thing that we want to track is our client retention. I want to know how long clients are staying with you. So that's a number that you'll want to track. It's not a monthly, it's not a weekly, it's a client. So every time you have a client that leaves, you'll want to mark how many months they stayed with you.[00:19:00]
After you have this going for probably a year, you'll be able to see how long do clients stay with you. That's a really important number to know that most people aren't tracking because that determines what your lifetime value is of a client so when we're looking at this, the only things you need to be tracking for your business is your revenue, your sales calls, your outreach, and how long clients are staying with you.
Now, part of those, you'll get subset numbers, like your conversion rate on your call, sales call. You'll get the number of like how many people you reach out to, to how many discovery calls you land. So those can be automatically tracked if you're tracking the outreach, the sales call, the client acquisition.
And then your client retention rate. So when we talk about KPIs, those are the only ones you really need. Now, as an ad manager for clients, we talk about your Northstar KPI, and we have a whole meta strategy guide inside of [00:20:00] conversions for clients to know what is the stat we need to track?
And what are the sub Set numbers that we also need to track, and it's only three to five for each and no more. And we teach you how to create reports. So if that's something you're interested in, then go on and head to conversions for clients.com and we can help you get started on that. But for your service-based business, we're gonna track outreach.
Sales call, how many clients you get and your client retention. Those are the four KPIs you need to worry about. The other ones do not matter and they're just going to give you analysis paralysis and we don't want that.
So when it comes now that we know the four things we need to track, then when we come to implementing this in our business, one, we need to set goals. What is your target revenue? How many clients do you want? That is what we want to set clear goals. Maybe you also have a goal of like how many hours you want to work.
I would recommend not having more than one or two goals because we want to focus on one [00:21:00] thing and that's it. We want to choose the relevant KPIs, which I just gave you those. So I just shortcut that process for you. We want to create a tracking system to actually track this. Are you going to do it in your CRM like Dubsado or HoneyBook?
Are you going to use a spreadsheet? Are you going to use the Airtable? Do you have a weekly form? It doesn't matter what you do. This can be so simple as writing on paper. Like I don't care how you do it, but we do need a way to track these numbers. It could be on a whiteboard, wherever you feel more comfortable.
Most comfortable. Don't overcomplicate this. You don't need fancy and then we're gonna do regular reviews. How often are you gonna track these? For outreach, I would do that every single week. For how many discovery calls you had, I would do that weekly. For how many new clients you got and also your revenue, I would track that monthly.
And so this isn't something that they're tracking every single day, it's weekly and monthly, and then we can look at it at [00:22:00] quarters and yearly if you want, but we need to have a regular review schedule.
When we use this framework, we can stop under tracking and we can stop over tracking, because now we know exactly what we're tracking. We're tracking our outreach, our sales call, how many clients we're getting, and our revenue and the retention. Then, how to implement this, we set goals, we track our KPIs, we create that tracking system, and we review it regularly.
It is that easy, my friends. It is so easy and it's something that I see so many people getting wrong and overwhelmed or they're not hitting the goals and they don't know why and it's because they're not tracking anything. So where's our happy median so we can help you hit your revenue goals? And even in conversions for clients, I tell them, if you don't have anything tracked, I can't help you troubleshoot this because I don't know what's broke.
And remember your clients don't want a bazillion numbers. They hired you to know those numbers, not [00:23:00] them. So if this is something you've been struggling with, I hope this episode gives you hope that you don't need all the numbers and it doesn't need to be super time consuming. It just needs to be consistent and focused on the right things.
And when you do that, everything else will fall in place. So I hope this episode encourages you to set up your tracking system. And if you don't want to DIY it and you want help doing this, head to conversionsforclients. com and learn more about how you can join us inside and get all the templates and the shortcuts to do this in your business.
And so until next week, my friends go out, serve your clients, scale your business and soar into the success you deserve.