Who can forget Joey Tribbiani, the struggling actor played by Matt LeBlanc, on the Emmy Award Winning Comedy, Friends. In his attempt to win over women, Joey drew on his famous catch phrase, “How YOU doin’.” Joey’s signature phrase quickly became part of our lexicon.
So, How YOU doin’? And, by that I don’t mean how are you feeling, how is your day, or what are you up to. I mean: How is your business doing relative to your goals. Do you know? Can you say with absolute certainly that you know precisely how your business measures up?
The only way we really know for sure how our business is doing is to take its pulse once a month, at a minimum. It’s always good to make sure the business still has a pulse and be able to determine how strong or weak the pulse is of your business. The metrics – those key elements you measure each month – is the best way to determine if you’re winning or losing.
Although there is a plethora of measurements you can take each month, it’s important to identify the key metrics that have the greatest impact on the growth of your business as defined by you. These usually are elements that, when stimulated by your strategies, create a domino effect influencing other elements important to the growth and viability of your enterprise. You focus on 2-3 key elements, which in turn trigger the domino effect.
How business growth looks, feels, and is defined is different for each business. Influenced by the values, beliefs, desires, and goals of the entrepreneur, growth may be revenue driven, profit oriented, or fulfillment motivated, just to mention a few. Key metrics need to match each entrepreneur’s definition of growth.
Business metrics help you make better business decisions. They prevent growing your business in the dark. The information transforms your mission and strategy into specific, quantifiable goals and measures your performance against those goals. And, they never lull you into believing things are better (or worse) than they are.
Remember, if you don’t know it, you can’t grow it.
Related Blog Topics:
30 Ways for Entrepreneurs to Grow Their Business
Five Smart Strategies to Set Yourself Up for Success
Survey Says: Juggling Most Challenging Aspect of Entrepreneurship
Be Speedy in your Decisions: The Strategic Coach Perspective
