What if all you need to focus on your business is - The One Metric That Matters?

What if focussing full force on just one thing would be what changes everything in your business.

Think about it:

How would this approach change things for you? How would it impact the way you invest your time and money in your business? How would it affect you as a business person?

Well, I've just decided on my One Metric That Matters and it has changed everything. It has impacted how I plan my day, what I invest my time in and how I feel about my business. I don't have any results to report that are tangible yet since I've just begun this last week.

But what I can report on is that I feel more focused and clear about my activities during the day and at the end of the day I go to bed feeling accomplished and content with my efforts. 

This is a big change from working all hours of the day and night and still not feeling a sense of completion. The to-do list of a solopreneur are never-ending. Can you relate?

So this is what I invite you to do:

Don't let this blog post be yet another that you skim through or read over and forget about it in a few weeks.

Do let this blog article be the source of a pivotal moment in your business when you decide on your One Metric That Matters.

I did just that with an article I read last week. It was a phenomenally inspiring article by Garrett Moon, the CEO of CoSchedule, a SaaS company. He wrote about  about how he grew his company to $5MM using the 1MTM Framework and I decided that the time I invested in reading his article will result in a practical action-plan that I put into place by that weekend.

In this blog post and video, I am sharing exactly what that action-plan turned out to be and what my 1MTM is as a result. You will also learn a lot about my goals and focus in the current stage of my business. 

And if all of this does what it's meant to, then you will be inspired to clarify your 1MTM One Metric That Matters and move towards better results in your business.

Are you in?

Let's begin:

Watch the video to see me walk you through all the steps:

What is the 1MTM Framework?

Before I go any deeper, let's quickly review what 1MTM is. The 1MTM or The One Metric That Matters is something that is detailed in the book, Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz.

The essence of the 1MTM is that you focus on just one thing and measure just one thing in your business and all your efforts in your business should be focused on that one thing.
 

I was completely intrigued by this article - not because the idea of focussing on one thing was new. I've read the The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and because of my leanings to a minimalist lifestyle, I resonate with the idea of 'less is more'.

But here I found an article of a real business that actually put the idea into practice and yielded tremendous success. Clearly, the idea is powerful not just in theory but most importantly, in practice, and here's a business that proves it.

So what was CoSchedule's 1MTM?

Get Traffic that leads to Email signups.

Now it's not surprising that an SaaS company would focus on traffic + email signups. As an email marketing consultant, it's über-obvious to me because email lists lead to more conversions than any other marketing method. 

As Garrett puts it, "...your emails enjoy about 350% more visibility than organic social messages. And that’s just on a bad hair day." 

I was so impressed by this article that I decided that I will not just read it and move on to the next to-do on my list. I wanted to bring that understanding and apply it to my own business.

So I wrote this comment to Garrett's article and committed to an action-plan as a result:

Here' a better look at my action-plan:

1. Set aside an hour this weekend to identify what is the 1MTM in my business. ✔︎ Done

2. Create a spreadsheet to track that metric starting now. ✔︎ Done

3. Consider the advice of creating one less weekly video/blog and creating a content upgrade instead. ✔︎ Done - already created one new CU

4. Identify which video is most viewed on my YouTube channel and which article is most read on my site. Create a content upgrade to serve that question for my audience. Scheduled

5. Then create more content that would support the most wanted content on my platforms (website blog + YouTube). Scheduled

6. Read Garrett's article again in a month (on July 14th) to see what else I can learn from it. Scheduled

The 1MTM for CoSchedule was to build Traffic and drive conversion to their email list. Now in the back of my mind, building an email list has always been important. But to be honest, in the whole rush of serving my clients and making a living, I confess that I've neglected the list-building part of my business.

On top of that, I implement email marketing systems for my clients - so it's a bit ironic that it was not front and center in my own focus. Instead, what I've been focussing on is getting new clients, retaining old clients and then working on the projects for implementing their systems.

As a solopreneur doing all things in the business all the time, building an email list came as an afterthought. Can you relate?

But I didn't want to just jump at 'build my email list' as my 1MTM just because that's what everyone said. I didn't want to just pick my 1MTM willy nilly without putting in some thought and making sure it actually was aligned with what I want to create and achieve in my business.

So how was I to figure out my 1MTM?

As I promised in my comments, I set aside some time that weekend and came up with some good results.

Beach chairs on the front porch, a sunny Saturday afternoon and delightful sandwiches were in order!

That's the way I went about it, at least. Colorful IKEA beach chairs are key! And yes, a business-minded partner to Hedgehog with, in this case, my husband. 'Hedgehogging' is something I learnt from the author Jim Collins of Great by Choice, which for me is a focused session to review my business at the executive level - from big picture down to nitty-gritty.

Well, I'd like to share with you my process that I went through that weekend after I read Garrett's article:

1. What are the current activities in the business? What are you already tracking?

I started off by listing the kinds of activities that I was already doing in my business and some metrics that I would assess from time to time. If you are a solopreneur wearing those 100 million hats, I think you might relate.

Some metrics that a solopreneur offering a service would consider are:

Revenue
No of Client inquires via contact form or email
Traffic
Page views
Time spent on the site
No of YouTube Followers
No of Facebook Likes

No of old clients
No of new client inquiries
Writing proposals to prospective clients
Writing blog articles
Publishing YouTube video tutorials

Hosting Live free events/webinars
Hosting Live paid workshops
No. of paid workshop participants
No of emails sent out
No of email subscribers

... and so on.

Then we discussed what One Thing I could do on a consistent basis that would make everything else easier? This question is inspired by Gary Keller's book, The One Thing.

To answer that though, I had to dig deeper into what is the goal of my business right now and what am I working towards down the road - say in a few years.

2. What is the goal of the business?
The goal that I have currently in my business is to build it to create leveraged income in a couple of years. I would like to create online programs/e-courses that will help solve specific problems of my audience. I also want to work one-to-one with solopreneurs and online businesses to create their websites that convert. And I want to teach live workshops on the same topic both online and in-person around North Carolina and New Jersey/New York area and may be even Germany and the UK and other places in a few years.

3. What is currently on offer? Or what are you working to build?

These are the services and workshops that  I currently have on offer are or am working to build:
1. content marketing strategy services
2. email marketing strategy services
3. web design service to create a Squarspace website with content marketing and email marketing in place from the start
4. teaching live workshops on how to create high-converting websites using email marketing and website that are optimized for conversions
5. working on online courses
6. working on digital downloads such as worksheets, action plans, workshops and books.

4. What is important for your current stage in business? And what do you see important for the future stage of your business?

So what is common in both my current stage and the future stage of my business is visibility. I've got to have an audience who likes, trusts and knows me in order to take the next step with me. This is something that happens long-term over time. That's why an email nurturing system is critical.

Now, we know that the number of products or services sold is connected with the number of subscribers one has. The higher the number of subscribers the more products and services will sell. It really is a numbers game.

So clearly building my list is a key metric.

My email list size is my 1MTM 

But knowing this 1MTM leads to the next question:

How will I build my email list?

Should I be tracking my page views?

Should I be spending my time learning every metric in my Google Analytics account?

The way I came up with the next bit of insight was this. All those page view related metrics or my email list number were not going to change by me just tracking it each week or each month.

I realized I've got to put into place a system that will influence incoming traffic.

Now I've got to options:

Long-haul efforts via organic traffic over time

or

Quick spike in my email list with Ads in short period of time

At this phase in my business, I know that Ads are out.

Why?

Because:
1. I have yet not played around with Ads.
2. I don't want to invest time in learning about ads just yet while I am still building other parts of my business and serving my clients.
3. I don't want to invest the money in another expert or consultant while I am still working to get my revenue up AND building other parts of my business.
4. There's a lot of trial and error involved with Ads which calls for time and money that I'd rather invest in building other areas of my business and serving my current and new clients.

So, for now, ads are out.

I am actually relieved that I will be focussing on organic growth. I've seen and heard about countless entrepreneurs building their business on organic traffic. I will eventually enter those waters where I consider investing in ads but I know that now is not the time and I am fine with it.

What remains then is: organic traffic.

So now there are still many things that I can track and measure. But I want to focus on what actions I can take in order to grow the traffic. I want to track things that I can control and influence. 

These are the three variable inputs that I can control and influence:
1. No. of blog posts I publish each week
2. No. of YouTube videos I publish
3. No. of Content Upgrades or Lead Magnets that I have on offer

Sidenote: I've already determined in a previous Hedgehog session that my core means of creating content is a combination of blog articles and video tutorials. So that rules out all the other types of content that you, for instance, may choose from. 

Why Blog Posts?
To build credibility and solve problems
I need blog posts because they are highly valuable tool to demonstrate my expertise on a topic and more importantly, to solve a particular problem of my ideal client. See my blog post 043 on that topic where I share more about the importance of blogs and content on your site. However, I need to help my site to get found. That's where YouTube videos come in.

Why YouTube Videos?
To solve problems and get found on Google searches
Next, I need to create YouTube videos because YouTube serves as a search engine more than a social media platform. Videos are beloved by Google Search and my audience is looking for answers on YouTube. It is essential that I have a presence there in order to reach out to those who are looking for solutions that I can offer. See my YouTube channel here:

Why Content Upgrades?
To help retain traffic and convert visitors into subscribers
And finally, I decided to have content upgrades and lead magnets because these are what people like to opt-into. They go deeper into the blog topic and offer more support to your reader in solving whatever question your blog attempts at solving. In essence, give them even more value.

These three variable inputs all falls into step 2 that I wrote about in blog 043 which is all about content creation and conversion.

So as you can see even though the 1MTM is my email list, I will be focussing my time and energy on creating blog articles, YouTube videos and new content upgrades + lead magnets. And this is something I will track monthly.

I will come back next month and add any insights from my second reading of Garrett's article. Until then, I invite you to craft your own One Metric That Matters. 

Share with me in the comments your 1MTM and how you came to choose it in 4-5 sentences or less.

Peace,

Sophia

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