It’s really easy for me to look at something I tried in my business and immediately put it into one of two categories:
Either it worked, or it didn’t.
I sent an email and made sales? Great. It worked. I created something and hardly anyone bought it? Didn’t work. A promotion brought new people onto my email list? That worked. I spent hours on something that barely seemed to make a difference? Well…that was apparently a waste of time.
But I’m starting to think those labels aren’t particularly helpful. Because whether I got the result I wanted or not, something happened. And whatever happened gave me information.
Your Business Is Giving You Information All the Time
I was thinking about this after taking some time away from my business recently. Before I left, I scheduled emails and blog posts so they would continue going out while I wasn’t working. They did.
Then right around the time I came back, a bundle I’m participating in opened. People started finding my business and joining my email list through something I’d created earlier.
I wasn’t sitting at my laptop making those things happen in real time. I’d done the work beforehand. That was useful for me to notice. It showed me that some of the work I do can continue helping my business after I’ve finished doing the actual work. That’s the kind of thing I want to pay attention to.
Not because every email, blog post, product, promotion, or partnership needs to work without me forever. But because if something I create once can continue bringing people into my business, generating sales, or helping my audience later, that’s useful information about where I might want to spend more of my time.
Good Results Are More Than Something to Celebrate
Of course I like when something works. If an email makes sales, a free resource brings in subscribers, or a product sells well, I’m happy about it. But I don’t want to stop at Yay! That worked! I want to know why it worked.
- Was it the topic?
- The offer?
- The subject line?
- Where the traffic came from?
- Did I promote it differently?
- Was it something my audience had been asking for?
- Did I make it particularly easy for someone to take the next step?
I may not always be able to know exactly what caused a result. Business is messy, and there are usually several things happening at once. But I can still look for clues. If I understand what seems to be working, I have a better chance of doing more of it.
Disappointing Results Are Data Too
This is the part I’m trying to get better at. Surprisingly, when something doesn’t work the way I hoped, my first reaction isn’t ever: Awesome! More data!
I’m disappointed. It could be because I spent a lot of time creating something and hardly anyone bought it. Or maybe I sent an email I thought was great and very few people clicked. Maybe I tried a marketing strategy that didn’t bring in the traffic I expected.
Obviously, I’d rather those things work. But once I’m done being annoyed about it, there’s usually something I can learn. The important part is figuring out what the result actually tells me.
If a product didn’t sell, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad product.
- Did enough people see it?
- Did the right people see it?
- Did they understand what it would help them do?
- Did people reach the sales page but not buy?
Those answers point to very different problems. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not always easy to think this way, but it really is helpful. I’ve run into this in my own business recently.
I had some opt-in and sales pages that weren’t producing as many sign-ups and sales as I wanted, and it would have been very easy to decide the pages needed work. But when I finally paid attention to how many people were actually reaching them, I discovered something much more useful.
The bigger problem was traffic. If I’d only looked at the result, not enough sign-ups…I could have spent hours fixing the wrong thing. The data helped me see what was actually happening.
Be Careful What You Decide the Data Means
I think this might be one of the most important parts. We can have data and still draw the wrong conclusion from it. Let’s say you send an email promoting a product and nobody buys.
The data is: No one bought from that email. But it’s very easy to turn that into: Nobody wants this product.
Those aren’t the same thing. There are a lot of other questions you need to ask, such as:
- How many people opened the email?
- How many clicked on the link bringing them to the sales page?
- Was this the first time you mentioned the product?
Let’s say 500 people opened the email and nobody clicked. That tells you one thing. But if 50 people clicked through and nobody bought, that’s probably something else. And if only three people reached the sales page, that’s something else again.
The result tells you what happened. Then you have to investigate before deciding why it happened.
Sometimes the Most Useful Data Isn’t a Number
When I say “data,” I don’t just mean opening an analytics dashboard. Some of the most useful information in my business comes from things people actually do and say.
I also want to pay attention when someone replies to an email and tells me which part helped them. Or when several people ask me the same question. I want to notice which of my products people are buying and which they’re ignoring, or when a particular topic gets more replies than usual.
I also want to notice when a certain business task consistently takes me three times longer than I think it will. All of that tells me something.
Even my own experience doing the work is data. If something is consistently difficult to maintain, I want to know that. If I keep avoiding one part of a process, why?
If something takes far more time than the result seems to justify, is there an easier way to do it…or should I be doing it at all?
Not every useful business lesson lives inside a spreadsheet.
Look for Patterns, Not One-Off Results
There’s one thing I want to be careful about, though. One result doesn’t necessarily mean very much. One email with a terrible open rate doesn’t mean my email strategy is broken. One product sale doesn’t prove I’ve created the perfect offer. One social media post getting a lot of attention doesn’t necessarily mean I should completely change my content strategy.
Sometimes weird things happen. That’s why I’m trying to look for patterns. If certain topics consistently get more clicks, that’s interesting. If one traffic source repeatedly brings people who join my list, that’s worth noticing.
If I keep spending hours on a particular activity and can’t connect it to audience growth, sales, relationships, or another result I actually care about, that’s worth noticing too. The more often something happens, the more useful that information becomes.
Progress Doesn’t Always Look Like a Bigger Number
I think this is where my definition of progress is changing a little. Of course, I want the numbers to go up. I want more people finding my business. I want my email list to grow. I want to sell more products and make more money.
But sometimes progress happens before the number improves. Maybe I finally learn why people aren’t reaching a sales page. Maybe I discover which type of free resource brings in the people who are most interested in what I sell. Maybe I realize I’m spending too much time on something that isn’t contributing much to my business. Maybe a small experiment tells me what not to spend the next three months doing.
Those things may not immediately show up as revenue. But they can help me make better decisions that eventually do.
Learning something useful about your business is progress too.
What Has Your Business Been Trying to Teach You?
I think there’s a temptation when we’re trying to grow a business to keep looking for the next answer somewhere else. Whether it’s taking another course, trying a new strategy, finding another tool…or coming up with a completely new idea.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we genuinely need those things. But I also think there are answers sitting inside what we’ve already been doing. Look at the last few weeks or months. What brought people into your business? What generated sales? What got ignored? What did people respond to? What took a huge amount of time for very little return? What was surprisingly easy? What kept working after you’d finished creating it?
You don’t have to analyze every number you’ve ever collected or build an enormous spreadsheet. Just notice.
There may already be something your business has been trying to tell you.
Use What You Learn
Of course, noticing isn’t particularly useful if I never do anything with what I learn. If I see that something consistently brings new people into my business, I should give it more attention.
If people repeatedly respond to a certain problem, maybe that’s something I should create more content or products around.
If something takes a huge amount of time and produces very little, maybe I should change it, or stop doing it completely.
And if an experiment doesn’t work? I don’t necessarily have to keep trying harder until I force it to work. Maybe the useful result was learning that this isn’t where I want to spend my time.
That’s why I like thinking about progress this way. I’m not just asking: Did this work? I’m asking: What did this teach me?
Because every useful answer gives me a little more information about how to build a business that grows without wasting my limited time on things that aren’t helping it grow.
And the more I pay attention to what my business is already telling me, the better my next decision can be.
