How measuring the right thing helped me rapidly grow my business

I stumbled across a one-liner a few years ago that said:

‘What gets measured, gets done.’ 

I’d like to say it transformed the way I thought at that moment. 

But it didn’t… It stuck with me but I took no action.

In fact, it took me years of kicking it down the road until I experienced the real value of it. 

And recently I thought back to that time when I first heard it and wondered why the hell I liked it so much but didn’t take immediate action.

And you know what it was?

I had no bloody idea what to measure!

Sounds ridiculous right…?

I mean, people go on and on telling you to measure results and outcomes. All the tangible things.

And that all makes sense of course.

But I didn’t know where to start.

Somewhere along the line I began to measure my financial growth by looking at my weekly turnover. And I remember I made some pretty good progress simply by focusing on it.

But I still struggled to connect that juicy one-liner with MASSIVE gains. 

Because, as an entrepreneur, it’s often hard to see the progress daily, weekly or even yearly.

In fact, some days you feel like you’re going backwards. 

And if you’re measuring results like I was, going backwards is soul-destroying.

I spent the good part of a year in that headspace of ups and downs. I began to lose all hope and motivation in that beautiful one-liner - what gets measured, gets done.

Then back in April this year sitting in a workshop, the solution came to me like a drop bear landing in my tea cup.

You don’t ONLY have to measure output - things like progress, results and milestones.

You can also measure inputs - the actions, execution standards and consistency.

I know, I know…! 

It sounds stupidly simple.

But in the moment for some reason this wasn’t clear to me.

And if it wasn’t clear to me, I can only assume it might not be clear to at least one other person. 

So let me explain the difference (and how I’ve applied it). 

Say you’re trying to grow your business and you identify that making some sales calls or sending samples to potential clients would be a good way to boost your revenue. 

The old version of myself would have thought about measuring the number of new conversions. 

 - How much has revenue increased?

- How many new sales have I made?

- How many additional products are we selling?

Things like that. 

But when you’re not making quick progress, it’s easy to lose momentum. 

And when you’re time poor or fighting the daily battles in small biz, sometimes you can’t magically make a sale happen to reach your goals.

So during those times you make no progress at all.

The alternative is to measure the ACTION. The amount of work you put in that if done consistently and well, would lead to a sale.

For example…

If I wanted to measure progress towards the same sales goal and measure ‘action’ instead of outcomes, I would look at:

- Number of LinkedIn DMs I sent

- Number of sales calls made daily

- Number of cold emails sent each week

- Number of follow samples personally addressed and sent

I’d set a strict number and try to understand that out of every 100 calls I make, I know it converts to X number of sales or revenue increases.

These ACTIONS are things you have control over. 

And focusing on them makes it way easier to hold yourself accountable, build consistency and stay motivated.

For me, it was better than riding the roller coaster of uncertainty around hitting sales targets.

Now, the truth is, everyone is motivated by different things. 

Outcomes are great for tangible targets. I.e. projects that have physical outcomes.

Measuring action is better for things that are hard to see progress on. 

For example team culture, daily activities and shit you know you need to do consistently to get a good long term outcome.

The key is to measure both for different things (and different people).

But the lesson is to at least measure something. 

Because what gets measured, gets done. 

I hope this helps!

Have a ripper week.