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We all have goals for our business, even if they aren’t clearly articulated or written down and measured.

For some the thought of writing down and tracking their progress towards their goals makes their toes curl.

For others, it’s something they love to do, even to the point of using it as a form of procrastination to avoid doing the work they don’t love to do…

However, there is a lot of truth in the saying “what gets measured gets improved.”

Which is why with my 1-2-1 clients and the Focus-Action-Results group clients each month we track 5 different indicators, 2 of which may surprise you.

I think of them of the 80/20 of KPI tracking.

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There are more indicators that you should be tracking in your business, (I cover these and how to use them to grow your business incrementally and systematically in Business Growth Essentials) but when working with clients my aim is to get the biggest results as easily and simply as possible.

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The first three will come as no surprise to you:

• New Leads
• Monthly Revenue
• Profit Margin

These three numbers enable me to get a good idea of how the business is performing, enabling us to head off potential issues before they become a problem.

It’s the last two that may come as a surprise.

However, they are just as important…

• Days Spent In Genius
• Days Free From Business

Let me explain more…

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Days Spent in Genius

Most of us don’t create our businesses so that we can spend most of our time in the drudgery of all the essential parts of running a business that drain us.

We start our businesses so that we can spend more time doing what we enjoy.

That’s where this KPI comes in.

What is Genius?

To quote Taki Moore (who gave me the inspiration for this),

“it’s the thing that you are gifted at, that you could do forever and never get bored and that you could learn about for a hundred million years”.

It’s also the thing that brings in the money to the business, and that’s kind of important!

That thing that lights your fire as opposed to all the, to you, drudge work.

So, each month, we track how much time was spent in Genius as a number of days, to the nearest half day.

It’s amazing how many business owners end up spending all their time dealing with admin, finances, client care, and very little time in their Genius, doing the thing that they get paid for, and their reason for starting the business in the first place.

The purpose of tracking days in Genius is to shine a light on the reality of how the business owner spends their time with the goal of increasing the number of days spent in Genius each month.

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Days Free

This is my favourite of all the numbers we track. Don’t get me wrong, I love my business and I love what I do, but not having enough time away from business is not healthy.

This is also the one that my clients struggle with the most.

They are not alone, I’ve had to work on this too.

There are two main reasons so many entrepreneurs and business owners struggle with this.

1. We love what we do and we are driven to do it.
2. We are having to hustle and grind just to tread water.

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What is a Day Free?

Using Dan Sullivan’s definition:

a day free is a 24-hour period from midnight to midnight not thinking about work/business, not reading about work, not checkin e-mail etc.

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That’s a pretty strict definition and it’s really difficult!

Yet it is so important to take time away from your business, to recharge and refresh so that we are not living to work all the time.

One of the purposes of your business is to help you create the life that you want, to create independence and freedom of choice.

You won’t get that if you are working 24/7 all the time.

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So there you have it two unexpected goals for your business.

I’d love to know what you think, useful or not? How would you do if you tracked these two numbers each month?

Until next time,

Louise

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P.S. If you bought Content To Grow Your Audience, Engagement & Book More Clients, be on the lookout for an email next week, with an important update and additions to help you create more content more easily…

And if you don’t have it yet, you can get it here, including all future updates.