Key performance indicators (KPIs) are super helpful for tracking progress, making progress, and feeling like something is getting done. It’s very hard for solopreneurs and freelancers to keep track and stay accountable to their KPIs. It’s also hard sometimes to feel in control of things like income and set a goal like “I will make $40k this month” because it can feel like it’s not in our hands.
I propose a tangential KPI. If we can connect the thing we want to something that seems more graspable, we can work on the graspable thing.
Let’s say we are making $1000 per week on youtube and that’s somehow related to our view counts on our monetized videos, but not directly. It’s also coming from several different videos at the same time. We could decide that the thing to work on is not getting more money this quarter, and not getting more views, but we try an experiment. The experiment could be:
- I am making $1000/wk on youtube
- I have 60k subscribers
- I’m good at getting subscribers
- If I had 120k subscribers would I make twice as much?
- My goal is to get 200k subscribers by the end of the quarter
Then, we make all our promotions, all our videos, the majority of all our work focused on getting more subscribers. WE don’t care if our view count goes down, we don’t care if we get terrible comments on our videos. Just are just tracking those subs and seeing:
- can we increase our subscriptions at will?
- how are our subscriptions directly related to our income?
Since the finances can be an emotional burden, this takes some of the heat off. This also gives us more clear tasks. Instead of just thinking all day “I gotta make more money!” We think, “what video got me the most new subscribers? Can I repeat that? What can I do better for subscribers today?”
“Fifteen casting directors know about me and I’ve gotten in one commercial. If I meet fifteen more, will I get another booking?”
“I made 10 phone calls last week to agents and three of them asked for a headshot. If I make 100 calls next week, will I get to send 30 headshots?”