Reviewing your holistic business health with key metrics
For someone that uses gardening and natural growth as a business metaphor… I am really bad at gardening!
When I was in grad school for engineering in Pennsylvania, a few of my friends and I banded together to rent a plot at the grad school garden.
We showed up at the cold end of March… to a rocky, hard soil patch.
John had the tiller, so we spent a backbreaking weekend tossing out rocks and tilling the soil with his help.
Kristin and Kelly bought the seeds and other gardening accessories like stakes and tomato trellises.
I showed up with my adorably cute watering can.
And for months, one of us had to show up every day to tend the plot of land.
We had to water every day because it was so hot.
We had to weed and treat any bugs.
It was exhausting for a few reasons: one, because the plot was like 10 minutes away by car. Which doesn’t sound like a lot until 10 minutes becomes 20 minutes each way in evening traffic after a long day of school.
And also the water spigot was SO FAR away from the plot that it was many many trips with a f’in heavy watering can every day.
We anxiously awaited fresh vegetables. It was great to see the little sprout-y string beans, the baby cucumbers!
And at the end of the season, I “harvested” my lettuce. I think we had enough lettuce for A MEAL.
Suffice to say… we did not renew our plot for the winter/spring season.
What happened?
We gave up too early and abandoned our roots. The next season or year, we would have had less tilling and hard work to do with the soil to prepare it, since we had used it the year before.
We didn’t invest enough in systems to make tending easier. In retrospect, one of us should have invested in some kind of cart so we didn’t rip up our hands carrying the watering can on 6 trips a day.
We didn’t understand how many seeds we would need to generate fruit. I think I would have planted more or invested in a larger plot - or honestly, just enjoyed the process as much as the meal knowing what the result might be with our plot size.
The garden metaphor in reviewing your business results.
Too often, we’re only focused on the fruits of our business labor: the revenue, the number of new clients, your follower count (though I don’t think this is a real result).
We’re so focused on getting those fruits - fast - that we don’t invest in the efforts that makes the fruits happen more reliably and with a larger yield: planting the seeds, tending the sprouts, and strengthening the roots.
I’ve talked before about “leading” and “lagging” metrics, where leading metrics measure the input activities that lead to the results.
But I think this garden metaphor opens up more possibilities about how to view progress and start to see real change.
The real month end measures to track
The Fruits of your Labor: Measuring the ultimate health of the business
You do want to track your output results, even though these do take the longest to see traction.
But we want to go beyond the surface here.
Measures to track:
Your Revenue AND Profit: a healthy business makes money AND keeps money
New Clients: celebrate the wins here! And also take note of how they found you and how diverse and resilient your client base and referral/discovery sources are.
Your Mental, Physical, and Emotional profit: note how you’re feeling - because not all money or clients are good money if it puts you in a deficit in how you’re feeling beyond the profit.
The Sprouts You’re Tending: Looking for signals and traction
Before we see the final fruits, we see sprouts or saplings - the signs that our work is starting to get noticed and we’re headed in the right direction, even if that hasn’t manifested into closed clients or business yet.
Tending these sprouts - keeping in touch with potential clients in a sales process, nurturing existing referral sources, engaging with subscribers to your email newsletter or social media - may take a while to turn into final fruits but is a critical step along the way to see that others are engaging with your message or service.
Fruits tend to lag sprout growth by a few months, depending on your sales cycle.
Measures to track:
Proposals Sent: Track them even if they aren’t converting into clients yet so we can understand the impact of your messaging and pricing
Inquiries Received: Again, the first step for new clients is people reaching out about your work!
Attendees at your live events: Who is coming to sit by your fire and learn from you?
Engaged Subscribers: How many people are interested in hearing your message, and what makes that number change over time?
Earned Visibility Opportunities (podcast guesting, guest teaching, speaking, newsletter swaps and collabs, ads/sponsorships): How often are you getting the chance to showcase your work to new audiences?
The Seeds You’re Planting: Making outreach efforts to build/nurture your network and try new things
All of these sprouts all come from a seed - maybe it’s a seed that’s a network connection, maybe it’s a seed of a new project. It’s the effort in planting something new, knowing that those seeds take months - or years - to grow. How can we maintain a planting practice at times over the year so we have a regular bounty in a few months?
Seeds tend to be planted months or years before we see the fruits appear.
Measures to track :
Connection Calls: Relationships are built off conversations - how are you consistently engaging in conversations with new and existing network members?
Outreaches: These aren’t all “asks” - in fact, how can most of your outreaches be gives? Giving of gratitude, giving of connections, giving of unique value to that person. How rare is it to have someone reach out to you and let you know that you were on their heart or mind and have it be authentic and not a spammy DM.
Pitched Visibility Opportunities: How are you planting seeds in networks that you don’t exist in already? I do consider the earned visibility to be a sprout, because that’s a signal that your message or your relationship has been strong enough to secure you that spot.
The Roots You’re Strengthening: Deepening your business foundations
The roots of your business are the business-building projects that strengthen your business foundations and systems so that planting seeds, tending sprouts, and generating a larger harvest from that same activity level becomes easier.
Example projects might include implementing a new system to track and maintain your network, standing up your first monthly community roundtable, streamlining your offer suite, adding an assessment to your customer journey, hiring a team member, updating your invoicing process…
Strengthening the roots of your business is unique to the order that you tackle the roots. And it’s often work that’s behind the scenes and doesn’t impact business results until months or years later.
Measure to track:
Projects: Log the projects or business-building tasks that you completed this month beyond client work and ongoing business admin - because that’s the stuff that’s too easy to forget
Roots and seeds can take a long time to result in fruits - however, unlike my failed gardening experiment, I’m not starting over from scratch if I am consistently monitoring the health of all layers of my business garden.
I’m looking at the fruits each month and seeing if there’s slower growth or a less healthy plant than I expected given my sprout health and density.
I’m reviewing the seed to sprout/sapling to fruit yield to ensure the health of the ecosystem.
I’m planting new seeds based on the seasonal timing to avoid the feast or famine cycles - if I want squash in September, I’m not going to be able to plant that in August.
I’m always deepening the roots and making sure I have the depth ready to support more growth - with ease.
