I would like to let you in on a powerful secret. Are you ready? Wherever your attention flows, that thing grows.
It’s not like I don’t know you have heard this before. But applying it skillfully is in fact more challenging than it looks.
With this simple and powerful principle as an anchor, allow me to share with you 3 calculations I personally use to help me grow the things that matter.
Calculation #1: My Time Use
What Paying Attention To This Number Helps Me Grow: My business
Here is some tough love math. If your business isn’t growing but you are only spending 10% of your time on sales and marketing (i.e. the two activities that grow will produce the most growth in your business this year)…
People don’t spend nearly enough time on sales and marketing and then a) wonder why their revenues aren’t growing, b) start looking for a magic bullet c) get pissed when said magic bullet doesn’t work.
You want to grow your business? Spend more time on key growth activities. It’s simple. 🙂
Indeed, I recommend that most small business CEOs devote 50-60% of their time on sales and marketing. (Helping you set up your business so you can actually hit this time use ratio is what we do best, so go here if you want our help.)
Roughly once per quarter, I will take two hours and run a series of weekly calculations on where I spent my time. I allocate my time depending on my business goals. If I want to grow my business, my time use ratios look like this:
- Sales & Marketing Focus = 50%
- Thinking & Planning Focus = 20%
- Team & Internal Operations = 15%
- Delivery = 15%
If I’m going through a phase where I want to strengthen the business, I decrease time spent on marketing and sales and increase time spent on team and internal operations. For example, there were extensive periods this year where my time use was more like this:
- Sales & Marketing Focus = 25%
- Thinking & Planning Focus = 20%
- Team & Internal Operations = 40%
- Delivery = 15%
When I experience business problems, more often than not, it’s because my time allocation isn’t lined up with my business goals.
Calculation #2 My Net Worth
What Paying Attention To This Number Helps Me Grow: My wealth and freedom
This is another super important calculation to me. For years I didn’t enjoy calculating my net worth because I kept confusing it with self-worth and would feel very sad and low.
At the time, I didn’t realize how much dedication, effort, and patience are required to build a business that can produce real wealth. While my non-business owner friends were investing their salaries in 401ks and RRSPs, I was investing in my business — and that investment took time to show up in my net worth statement.
And this, dear reader, is the point where so many women entrepreneurs say “it’s too stressful” to focus on their net worth. While I completely empathize with that statement, I find it massively short-sighted.
For my part, I kept leaning into the discomfort of feeling my net worth was “too low”. I got my definitions straight (i.e. net worth is not self-worth), kept doggedly investing in my business, and continued running my net worth math. I transformed myself into a self-made millionaire one quarter at a time.
I update my personal net worth statement roughly once per quarter and use that number to execute the next step in my financial plan. Simply put: calculating my net worth regularly has made me richer.
Calculation #3 The Number of Steps I Take In A Day
What Focusing on This Calculation Helps Me Grow: My overall health
Getting 10K steps a day is the single most important thing I do for my health.
Last year I injured my psoas — a big muscle that runs inside the torso, connecting the back to the hips. I did massage. I did chiro. I did corrective strength training. None of which really helped.
Then my trainer Shauna suggested I get a Fitbit so I could “count my steps.” My response was a hard eye roll because we all know the minion step counters who are constantly leaping up and loudly volunteering to run errands so they can “get their steps in.”
Well, hell, I got myself an Apple Watch and was genuinely horrified at how FEW steps this live streaming, blog writing, zoom meeting CEO got in a day — often fewer than 2000 steps! I increased that to 10,000 steps per day and saw an immediate improvement in my injury, overall sleep quality, appetite, and mental health.
Now I am a minion step counter. The number of steps I get in a day helps me to naturally regulate pretty much everything else that matters: sleep, mobility, alcohol, and food consumption, Netflix consumption, etc. If I’m not happy with my lifestyle, I pretty much just need to ensure I get 10K steps and everything else falls into place.
Simply put, when I focus on the number of steps I get in a day, I am healthier.
To sum it up, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want, deciphering which metrics will actually help me get there, and then monitoring those metrics fairly diligently. These are 3 metrics that help me the most. I hope you found it useful.
Want More?
- Book a Debrief call with my team. We are very good at pinpointing the ONE THING that will drive the lion’s share of your growth.
- Uncover your niche by attending the Niche Down, Cash Up Masterclass
- Listen to Podcast Episode 443: Calendar Control