💡 Your Metrics and Analytics (Issue 100)

How is your business performing?

I wish I were better at this!

So, this will be a case of do as I say, not as I do—because tracking your business metrics and analytics will help you make better decisions.

Luckily, this is simpler when you run a solopreneur lifestyle business. When I was running a corporation with employees, it was complicated and messy.

I do check my analytics every few months to understand better how my marketing channels are performing, if a service is offering enough value to keep paying the monthly subscription fee, and how my various products and services are selling.

Things you should be tracking:

• Revenue (e.g., monthly recurring revenue)

• Operating expenses

• Profit margin

• Assets you’re purchasing

• Cost of various services you’re using (e.g., you may find a better deal)

• ROI on services you’re using (quantitative and qualitative)

• Leads per day, week, month (depending on your volume)

• Ad spend and performance (are your ads delivering enough conversion?)

• Marketing spend and performance (how are your channels doing in terms of traffic, views, engagement, and conversion?)

• Customer Acquisition Cost

• Customer Lifetime Value (who are your most valuable customers?)

• Customer growth

• Customer retention

• Sales conversion rate

• Sales growth

You’ll need a lot of this data for your annual tax returns. But this data will also help you tune and optimize your business operations.

It’s great to move fast and experiment with many new ideas, products, services, etc. But they all don’t work out, and you don’t want to keep paying too much or spending too much time on something that isn’t delivering enough value.

Tracking metrics has helped me decide when to shut something down when it’s not generating enough new leads or revenue to warrant the expense. Controlling expenses is critical for a lifestyle business owner. For example, the leaner you operate, the less stress you’ll feel if sales slow down for a few weeks.

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I’m Larry Cornett, a Freedom Coach who works with you to optimize your career, business, and life. My mission is to help you become a more "Invincible You" so you can live your life on your terms instead of being controlled by someone else's rules. I live in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with my wife and our Great Dane.

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash