Don’t Be Whack. Track.
Aaaaaaand we’re back!! Did you catch that rhyme scheme just now? Your boy is on fire today! That’s right baby, you thought you could be sneaky and get around another week of my Epiphone but you were sadly mistaken. I mean, doesn’t it just put a smile on your face each and every week when you’re greeted with another hot off the presses business coaching blog from yours truly? Okay well technically it’s not exactly coming at you from the actual “presses” but I’m sure you get my drift. This past week has been full of a ton of amazing client wins ranging from hitting revenue goals to landing a dream job lead. My clients are able to celebrate these big wins and congratulate themselves based off of the hard work it took to get here. However, they don’t just owe their success to their advertising, systems, or product quality. The real MVP here as it relates to all of them lies with their business coaching tracking systems. I know, I know. Don’t you dare even say it. You were going to ask just how in the heck a task as simple as tracking could generate growth. Well, let me stop you right there because one of the most important things that I’ve learned this week is that tracking is more than just putting numbers into a spreadsheet. Having a detailed account of what money is coming in, what money is going out, or where leads are coming from is paramount to the growth of a business. It is the difference between saying “I think we had a profitable week” or “I feel like our sales have increased”, to knowing cold whether or not your team hit the numbers necessary to pay the bills. It completely eliminates feelings from the equation and provides you with solid, tangible results.
Where To Begin Your Tracking Journey?
If you find yourself asking that handsome face in the mirror where exactly you should be starting your tracking process do not feel bad. This is a very common question that I receive from each of my clients. One area that I have learned is a fantastic place to start is with your income and expenses. Most people are aware of what bills they payout to each month as well as how much money hits their accounts in the form of deposits, however, unless you are taking a good hard luck at these numbers on a regular basis, you probably won’t notice any trends of overspending. You also might miss if your profits are lower or even higher than usual. Now, this process doesn’t have to be rocket science unless you want it to be. A quick and effective move that I learned from Clay is to run a full bank statement report and throw that bad boy into a spreadsheet. From here you simply make two columns and title each. One income and the other expenses. Easy enough so far right? After that, it’s as simple as filling out each column with deposits and withdrawals. Once you reach the bottom and total each column, you’ll immediately be able to see if you were profitable or not. A bonus benefit of tracking your income and expenses this way is that you can better identify unnecessary or strange spending trends and eliminate them. Allowing you to increase your overall profit the next time around. Having a set time to go over these numbers each week is a great way to stay on top of your profitability.
Bonus Business Coaching Tip: Now that you have cut unnecessary spending wouldn’t it be nice to hold on to that extra money? By simply automating your savings by 3% to 5% you allow yourself the freedom of setting aside more money for your future goals without the stress of trying to figure out how much to set aside and likely not doing so.
Measure What You Treasure
Now that you know how to keep track of what’s coming and going, it’s time to dive into the driving factors of each. It is finally time to talk about the importance of a weekly revenue tracking system. I learned early on that the simple move of diligently updating and reviewing these numbers is what has caused our most successful business coaching clients to grow. It’s imperative to keep track of the following key performance indicators on this tracking sheet:
- Date of you stats
- Total advertising cost
- Total advertising stats (Clicks, Views, etc)
- New customers have seen
- Customer origin (How did they find you?)
- Total new gross revenue
- Total recurring revenue
Now that we’ve identified our KPI’s it is important that we diligently update these EVERY SINGLE WEEK. Seriously, it has blown my mind how this simple practice has helped not only my clients, but other clients grow and reach their goals.
Simply put, having a goal and tracking your progress towards that goal is a sure-fire way to succeed. Will it take a couple of extra hours out of your week? Absolutely. Will you thank yourself when you see your weekly and monthly goals are being consistently hit or exceeded? You bet! It has been truly awesome watching my business coaching clients grow and learning just how powerful tracking can be alongside of them. In conclusion, don’t wait as long as I did to start tracking. Start a new spreadsheet or at the very least break out the pen and paper and get to tracking!
