Speaker 1: 0:00

I am one of those nerdy kids that would desperately wants to be woo Like. I want to be the witch in the woods in my cottage, but I'm just not good at it. So I surround myself by wooers, and not the ones that will stroke my ego, but the ones that are into woo. But I truly believe that your human design, your, the, the astrological orientations all of that is just different data that we can use to help us inform our decision.

Speaker 2: 0:28

Welcome to Tried and True with a dash of woo, where we blend rock solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach and professional photographer at your service. We are all about getting creative, diving into your business and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. Hey friends, welcome back to Tried and True with the Dash of Woo. I'm your host, renee Bowen.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Today we are talking numbers, but do not stress, because I have such an awesome guest who is going to explain it to you in such fun terms, in ways I dare say that you have not heard before. I've got Kelsey Silver on the show today, and Kelsey is a data analyst and operations strategist, but really she's here to make numbers make sense Okay, especially to us creatives without stress, without overwhelm or like the corporate nonsense Okay. So what she does is she helps six and seven figure entrepreneurs uncover hidden profit in their businesses and she helps them make smarter, more value-driven decisions without getting lost in spreadsheets or drowning in metrics that they don't actually really need. She has a really cool background as well. We get to that in the podcast, so I'll let you listen to discover that, but she's not your typical data analyst. Let's just say that. So I hope that the title of today's episode intuitive metrics how to track the right things without the overwhelm is intriguing to you, because you're in for a treat. I think you're going to learn a lot. This is super valuable. You're going to want to take notes.

Speaker 2: 2:08

So, without further ado, let me stop talking and let's get right into this awesome, awesome conversation I had with Kelsey Kelsey, I'm so excited about this conversation because it's going to be so juicy. My first question is, I think, probably a very top of mind for most of us creatives is you know, a lot of us feel this resistance when it comes to tracking numbers. We can even be triggered by all of that, right. So why, in your experience, do you think that is? How can we shift our mindset to make the data seem less overwhelming and more empowering?

Speaker 1: 2:42

Absolutely so. I'm going to give you a little bit of background here because I think it's really important for this conversation. I want to lay the foundation. I am not a data analyst by training. I'm actually a marriage and family therapist with a trauma-informed background, and when I got burnt out on my trauma work, particularly because I focused on adolescents who had experienced sexual trauma and resulted in substance use that burns you out real quick I transitioned into the administrative aspect and was like how can I care for these people that I desperately want to care for in a way that won't impact my own mental health and well-being? And I was able to do that by using the data to figure out better ways to help them, and so that's how I really love to frame it for people that are resistant upfront. So I want to just set the context with that is this whole conversation is going to be how can we use data this kind of scary thing on the side to help us better care for ourselves and our creativity, for the people that enjoy our work, for the work we do for others, and really set that frame.

Speaker 1: 3:48

Now, why are we so traumatized by them? And I'm using trauma small t here, but a lot of times there's, with all things, trauma. There's history that comes into it. So if you're like me and you're the burnt out, gifted, talented, only child that couldn't get anything less than an A, anything in your metrics that doesn't look perfect or that you can't explain is going to bring all of those feelings of guilt and unworthiness back up. Bring them right to the surface and guess what? If you don't have to look at them, why would you do that to yourself?

Speaker 1: 4:20

And then for others it might be. You know I'm highly ADHD. I work with a lot of neurodivergent clients. For some of us it's a sensory issue, a visual sense. The red, green, yellow sort of color scheme that a lot of metrics are presented in can be very jarring to our senses. Or it could be a learning situation. A lot of people are great with tables of numbers, but not graphs, or graphs and not tables of numbers. So there's all these aspects of who we are and what we're bringing to the table in terms of past experience that inform how we're looking at our data and whether our brains are really open to understanding the story that that data is telling us.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Oh my God, this is so good. This is so in alignment with what I talk about so much. All of these different learning styles. I mean I can tell I know part of your background is that gifted. That is such a big factor. I see in my coaching so many high-performing women, especially right we were that high achiever. We are expected to be also like many high performing women, especially right, like we were that high achiever we are expected to be also, like you know, I'm Gen X, right, like, so that also has something that I I serve a lot of Gen X women too that are, you know, were raised by boomers and we had certain expectations and so, like a lot of that goes into it. All of those things that you mentioned are definitely part of my story, like all of them for a little bit right.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Welcome to the club. You are not alone here, you are welcome.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Yeah, exactly, Thank you, and I love that because so many of us are in that club and so many of us, especially the perfectionism part, can like keep us feeling stuck and alone. But like, when we start to like expand that universe and realize like no, no, it's not as uncommon right as we think it is, we don't have to be isolated in that. And for me too, there was a lot of trauma surrounding the actual learning of it. Like I can track my math stuff all the way back to, you know, sixth grade, when pre-algebra and I was taught by nuns in a Catholic school and if you didn't get it you were just stupid. I was like no, I just really needed to be taught in a different way. Like not everybody learns. So I love that you brought that aspect into it, because those of us with spicy brains and there's a lot of us I think that kind of goes hand in hand with being gifted and self-aware and intelligent we also have some degree of spiciness in there.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Always. Yeah, it's a spectrum right, we're all in on it.

Speaker 2: 6:50

It's just where you land Exactly, and myself I have my oldest son, who's 26, has autism. My other son has severe ADHD. My husband's got severe ADHD. I always say my family is like neurodiversity soup.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Same over here.

Speaker 2: 7:04

Yeah, it wasn't until my kids were born and I became a parent that I was like, oh, I kind of think I might have some of those as well, especially the math thing, and I just even recently learned that there was like math dyslexia, like right. So wow.

Speaker 1: 7:21

And all severely underdiagnosed in older women. And when I say older, like anything over 25, severely underdiagnosed in older women. And when I say older, like anything over 25, severely underdiagnosed. Yeah, we're really, by the way all neurodivergent studies have mostly been done on white men A hundred percent, and we're really good at like making it work because we have choice right Cause of that conditioning and programming, and that's a whole different conversation. That's a different podcast episode. We'll record that in different time.

Speaker 2: 7:49

Okay, so I know that you see all of these different things and I love that. Your background, you know, is also so trauma informed, because, like you said, it might be like a little T but it feels like a big one, right, and so how do you work through that? Some of those things like that's kind of where I want to start is like all right, how can we, you know, calm our nervous systems? How can we what are some of the tools that you use, that you suggest people use to to make it less triggering, so that we can access these numbers, and then we'll get to some like data stuff too.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Yeah, I got you. So one of my absolute favorite methods of therapy when I was actually practicing was narrative therapy.

Speaker 1: 8:33

And narrative therapy is exactly what it sounds like. It is telling a story through therapeutic methods. And I use a lot of that work to this day, because when someone's like I don't even know what I should look at, I always say maybe you've heard of it in like a high school psychology class, but you use the empty chair method and you say, if my business was sitting in the chair across from me and I could ask it anything, I wanted to know what would I ask it? What do I want to understand better about it so that I could nurture it? And you kind of do a little self-reflection, right, do I want to nurture my business? Do I want my business to serve me? You kind of figure out what your business's purpose is in your life, because it's different for everybody. But then you ask it that question what story do I want it to tell me? Because that's all that.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Numbers are your metrics are the story. They're the words on the page. You get to write the ending based on what that story is telling you right now. So when you sort of do some of these narrative activities and think of your business as something, as an entity that you can really have a conversation with it starts to turn on some of those triggers in your brain that are healthier than the scary triggers. Right, because we have good triggers and we have bad triggers. So let's start triggering some of those good things, some of those safety nets, some of that curiosity.

Speaker 1: 9:57

I like to make fun of the fact that when I was in my corporate career, my avatar, like the little icon of me, was Stitch from Lilo and Stitch in a Sherlock Holmes detective outfit, because that's who I am. I'm this quirky little misfit that wants to just dig into everything and figure everything out. When you adopt an air of curiosity which, as creatives, we're so good at doing right, just being curious about it, sitting in curiosity we're so used to that, bringing us dopamine from the creative work that we're doing, that allowing ourselves to sit in curiosity with our numbers allows it to be more of a creative process than this very rigid, scary, judgmental process.

Speaker 2: 10:39

I love that. That's the first time that I've really heard that strategy. I love it. It can be super effective.

Speaker 2: 10:48

Knowing yourself, too, having that certain level of self-awareness, I think is a really big one, and not trying to force yourself to be what you're not. So that can look like a lot of different things for people, but it really. I think it comes down to like understanding, like how you learn, how you process information too, and even down to like what you were saying earlier about the colors. Right, like so when I do a spreadsheet, like I know what colors I'm going to use, like simple things like that can actually really make a big difference, because, as creatives, most of us are visual and a lot of us have, even, like, a deeper sensorial relationship with, like colors and sounds and smells, like a lot of us are, like have a lot of sensory input. So I think that that is, first of all, totally okay.

Speaker 2: 11:39

Right For you to do like. If you feel like, okay, I can't even look at that. That color is like like so triggering, or red or green, okay, well, turn to purple. Like you know what I mean, like do something. That's going to feel a little bit better.

Speaker 1: 11:51

I've had clients who use like monochromatic, and it's the lighter it gets, the less I have to worry about it. So you know, normally you'd think the darker the better. No, no, no. How do you associate that color? Well, blue is calm for me. I'm going to use blue and I need to worry about it. The lighter, I don't need to worry about it. The lighter it gets because it's harder to see and that's telling my brain you don't need to worry about it, you don't need to see it and it's a visual cue.

Speaker 1: 12:21

I've had clients who can't use line graphs because they know themselves they're going to the second. They see a dip, they're going to want to dig into that dip and it's going to cause anxiety. And no, no, no, use a rolling average, and even that phrase the fact that I just said rolling average might scare you. Okay, that's fine too. Use what's in your wheelhouse of like. Okay, let's say you're a painter and you have a palette of colors that you tend to go to. That's what you're known for, right, you're known for those colors. They feel good to you. They fit in your hand. You know exactly where on the palette you want them to go. Your numbers are going to create a palette for your business. Each of those metrics is one of the paints. And when you put them into the painting, that is your dashboard, your spreadsheet you have to create it in a way that makes sense. Your paintings, even if you're in abstract, even if you're in, just throw it I'm doing air quotes for those that you're in abstract, even if you're in, just throw it. I'm doing air quotes for those that you're listening, throw it on the canvas. You're, you're still intentional about it, you know. And so the metrics that you're looking at, first of all, you're going to pick the right metrics, the metrics that matter to you and to your business, because you're not painting with every single paint color that you have. You're picking the right ones, and I know I'm getting very far with this analogy. My brain is now in rabbit hole mode, but I love it. So you, you are picking the right paint for the painting you want to create. You're picking the right colors. That's what I call metrics that matter. And then, once you have those metrics that matter, you're putting them in a form that makes sense for your brain. That's pleasing, that allows you to interpret it and again, just like in a painting, many different people can interpret it many different ways. You, as the creator, the only one that knows the true intention of that painting, and you're infusing the painting with that intent, and you're infusing the painting with that intent If you go in to creating, like when I go in to create a dashboard for my clients, if I'm doing a VIP day with them and I'm creating a dashboard, if my intent is to show them all the things that are wrong with their business, that's exactly what I'm going to show them.

Speaker 1: 14:39

If my intent is to tell them everything that's going great in their business, that's what the data is going to show them. But if my intent is to sit in curiosity and find interesting connections, that's where I find money for my client. Oh, did you, you know? Did we ever think about how, when your clients come to you in this method, through this source, they eventually end up buying this thing from you? That's really interesting, and so I know we got really into a crazy metaphor there, but it's so indicative of the intent that you put into. It is, in fact, the result that you will get out of it.

Speaker 2: 15:21

Yes, absolutely, that is so cool. Yeah, I know I is so cool. Yeah, I absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:24

No, I talk about intention a lot. That's I feel like it's kind of one of my buzzwords, but it is, it's true. Like the intention you put behind anything right, it's like what you put in you're going to get out, and so I love the energy of curiosity too. And just because there's there is so much possibility there, like what if there is a place where, like I don't know where, this and I love that you help people find that that's that's really cool.

Speaker 2: 15:46

So I do want to sort of like segue into more of like the nuts and bolts of what you do, because I think it's it's so interesting because it's not really how my brain wants to work. Naturally, you know what I mean. I think I feel like it's super interesting once we're talking about it, but, like that's not where I go on my own. So I know that, whether you're a creative entrepreneur, a photographer, an artist, whatever you know, as you're listening to this, we hear a lot about oh, you need to track your numbers, you need to know your numbers, you need to do this, you need to do that, right, but what are those actual things like that you see, especially working with creatives. What are some of the? I think that we get a little hung up right On, like the engagement metrics or things like that. So what are numbers that actually move the needle for our creative business and which ones are just kind of like noise or not as important yeah?

Speaker 1: 16:38

So I like to divide metrics into five different categories, and that already feels like a lot. But I'm going to tell you right away you're going to pick one in each of the five, so you're never really tracking consistently more than five metrics at a time, like, please, for the love of everything, don't make yourself track more than five metrics. But it's the standard sort of marketing journey, right? It's lead generation, nurture, sales and delivery. And then I add the fifth, which is revenue, because we'd want to track that, we want to understand where the money is coming from. But in those five aspects you're going to pick one number, typically in the revenue category. I always like to suggest that you're tracking profit. Right, it's the most informed number because it's your revenue minus your expenses and that's it, just profit. That's it, that's your revenue metric done. But then, when we get to the other aspects, if you're just starting out with tracking your numbers, just pick one. You don't need to pick one in each of the other four categories or anything, just one that makes sense for the stage of business you're in. And so I always suggest working backwards. If you are established and you've been around for a bit, then probably you're picking a metric somewhere in the sales or delivery aspect, and so, for delivery, it might be what your capacity is and are you reaching full capacity, might be what your capacity is and are you reaching full capacity? Meaning I can book three photography sessions a week, and three weeks out of the four week month I booked all three. That is a metric and that's a really great metric, actually. And so I like to use that example because most people think that metrics are really complicated and that they have to be some very fancy number. No, no, no. It can literally be how many sessions are you able to do in a week and how many did you actually complete each week? Divide those and guess what you now have a metric. It's a really lovely metric to track, especially month over month or week over week, and that's a perfectly acceptable metric and a great introduction to tracking things over time. And that's a perfectly acceptable metric and a great introduction to tracking things over time.

Speaker 1: 18:47

And we were talking about what are the quote right metrics for creative, and of course it's always going to be an, it depends, right. But within those four categories, let's just dig into those for a second. So in your lead gen it's a very jargony phrase. So lead gen, in the way that we look at it as metrics, is how do people figure out who the heck you are Like? How do they even know that you exist? And that's lead gen, right. So, whether it's Google Analytics are going to tell you about how they're finding your website. But that's a lot of information, that's a whole heck of a lot of information in there.

Speaker 1: 19:24

So maybe you just start with how many people landed on your page because they actually searched your name. Just start there and start to see okay, is that increasing? Am I getting my name out there? Because, again, it's not just about the intention but it's about the interpretation. So one of the ways that you can interpret that, let's say that people search Kelsey Silver and one month when I check my Google Analytics, it's a thousand, and next month when I check it, it's 2000. Okay, what did I do last month that made my name more important? Because why else would someone have searched my name? And so we're again, we're opening the door for curiosity, right, let's get curious about what I did. Oh, okay, great.

Speaker 1: 20:13

So I I got on a podcast, I was on Renee's podcast, and so people knew my name and so they searched for me. This is good. This is good. Podcasts work for me and so you're starting to connect the dots. That's. That's legion. When you get into nurture it's. Are people trusting you? Do they stay with you? Now, if you have an email list, maybe it's just unsubscribe and you just don't want unsubscribes to get over one percent, because that means people are generally sticking with you. Maybe it's follows on KDP, right? Maybe it's followers on Instagram if you have a very Instagram heavy social. So we talked before. Well, most people think that engagement metrics are everything you have to track only if it matters for your business. But if it matters for your business, then it matters for your business.

Speaker 1: 21:00

You know if you are selling through Instagram and that's where you get, that's where the lead gen comes in, right, if a lot of the people are coming to you from social media, then, yeah, it makes sense to track some of those social media metrics. But if your leads aren't coming from social, then don't bother yourself with them. Dabble, have fun, enjoy, but you don't have to focus on them. And so it's this path of going through each of these four and getting curious about where are things coming from, where am I doing this activity and how can I figure out what's working?

Speaker 2: 21:35

within that activity. Yeah, and I just want to interject really quickly while we're on this subject for the photographers who are listening. I talk about we need to be kind of focusing on for what I do as, like, a boutique photographer and that's also what I teach. Right, there's like three. I call it like the trifecta.

Speaker 2: 21:51

It's SEO, which you touched on a little bit of like, okay, looking at Google analytics and looking at all of those numbers there or at least just some, right? Maybe not all of them. Social media is definitely a part of that for us, for most of us. I'm always talking about how it shouldn't be all of it, that's for sure, but it definitely should be supportive, especially depending on actually who you're speaking to as far as, like, your ideal client. Of course, then there's this other aspect of it, which is word of mouth. So I want to kind of touch on that for a second, because a lot of people have a brick and mortar or they have, like, a physical photography business or they do a lot of like in their local area. You know marketing and you know that's what they rely on for a lot of this lead generation. So what are some of those numbers that that we might not even be thinking about?

Speaker 1: 22:39

So I come from a data brain. I'm going to share this with you, but do not be overwhelmed, especially those of you who are like what the heck is she talking about? I'm going to say some words. There's going to be some abbreviations here, but we'll get to it.

Speaker 1: 22:54

My favorite thing to do with people who have word of mouth as a primary marketing mechanism is QR codes that have UTM links. Okay, what did I just say? Well, first of all, we know in the marketing world and in our modern society that QR codes drive a lot of traffic. They're way better than business cards right now. They're much more effective than someone having to type a link. Qr codes are where it's at in terms of visual marketing, but where people tend to fall short is they use the exact same QR code everywhere, that they put that QR code and you're losing so much data that way. It's very straightforward to create a QR code, so it's not a whole heck of a lot more difficult to add what we call UTM, and I have no idea what UTM stands for. I call it a universal tracking measure, but it's actually something much more odd that I can never remember. But I'm going to call it universal tracking number, and so when you build a UTM you can put things like method and campaign name and some keywords, and if you just Google, like literally Google UTM builder Google has their own UTM builder you put in all the things that are required and every single time it takes them to the exact webpage. Everyone's going to get to the exact same webpage, but these little UTM fields that come behind the website tell you, as the person looking at your analytics, where it came from.

Speaker 1: 24:30

So let's say that as a photographer I have. My best friend's sister is a photographer. She does all the school photography, right, but she also does dance recitals and everything like that. Well, if she has one QR code at the dance company and she has a different QR code at parent-teacher conference night at her table, she can tell how many people use those two different QR codes based on the UTM link. So she can start to get an idea for, okay, the people at the dance company. I'm constantly getting a steady flow of people from that link At parent-teacher conference. They just grab the flyer and they type in my link later.

Speaker 1: 25:11

So it lets you know where your marketing is being effective, and even more so if you get into more advanced analytics and I encourage you that, if this is not your wheelhouse, let someone else do this for you.

Speaker 1: 25:23

If you have a VA, yeah, they likely already know it. I don't like to encourage people spending money where they don't need to, but in truth, this is a place that will have a high ROI for you If you have your analytics set up well and you have someone putting in what's called key events. You can then track what percentage of people coming from each of these different sources sign up for your email list, end up purchasing from you, book a session, all of those different things. And that's where we start to get into one of those sales metrics, which is conversion. And when we know our conversion and we know what marketing methods work best for our conversion, it makes our decision making so much easier, because isn't it easier to choose between two or three things you know work very well than 10 ideas you have in your brain that you have no doubt?

Speaker 2: 26:22

Yes, this is so good, so good. I guarantee you, most of the people listening to this have not even considered doing UTM. Because you know, we see that, like if you've ever run an ad, right, like you see that, like you know, there's like that little thing that says do you want to put UTM in? But most people are like I don't know.

Speaker 2: 26:38

I don't know what that means, and you know I've had micro conversations here and there with photographers about trying to sort of decipher this information about, like, where are these leads actually coming from, even down to where, like, a lot of us have a, let's say, referral systems, right, because we have like really strong, ideally, word of mouth and sort of like a foothold in our local market.

Speaker 2: 27:13

Well, wouldn't it be great to figure out, like who those people are actually, if they're really referring you, right, like? So the only way to kind of like do that without using this sort of system would be to go into your CRM, create, like a specific contact form, a different one, link that out, make a QR code for that and then, okay, that would come into your CRM and you could maybe see but that's also not telling you there may be a lot of people who are clicking the link and not they don't want to send you a message, they don't want to like sign up for anything right now, and so you can't just really track otherwise, like the clicks, like you're saying, and so this allows you to see how much actual traffic you're getting and from where.

Speaker 1: 27:52

This works really well for people who publish books, like dropshipping books or people who sell on Etsy, because you don't have access to their analytics, because you don't own their website. But what you do have access to is like, if you've got a link tree, you do have access to the Google Analytics of the link tree. I always suggest that you make your own link tree on your own website, you know. But if you know, if you put a UTM in all the different places that you link to your link tree with proper UTM things behind it, and then you set up those key events on that link tree page, you then know, hey, all of my Instagram clicks end up going to this particular book. Did I post a reel about that book the other day? I wonder what's going on there? Oh, look, that reel did.

Speaker 1: 28:47

And then you get to follow the path, right, but without having the UTM and those key events show up. You know someone's just going to your Etsy page and then you've got no idea how they ended up there and you lose all of that information. That again, it's a little more work on the front end to set up, but there's relief in knowing, oh, I don't have to worry about this marketing aspect, like I'm stressing myself out, advertising this on Instagram and it works so well. On threads, why don't I just do it all through thread? And you want to still stay diverse? Obviously, right, we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket, especially with the price of eggs, so we want to keep experimenting because things shift.

Speaker 2: 29:37

But, my goodness, the relief when you say you know what, right now I don't need to worry about that, yes, exactly, and like that is such a huge factor when we're seeing, you know, so much creative burnout, like that's the the, the relief is there and yeah, it is. It is some work on the front end, it's. It's probably not something you love to do, but getting it done then you're done. You know what I mean, like not something that you constantly have to, you know, be generating, but just to sort of backtrack a little bit, cause I know I'll probably get some questions about this. Google has their own system where you can go and you can create UTM links.

Speaker 1: 30:17

Yes. So if you, if you just Google cause, you know let's get very meta here without actually the meta of the business If you Google, you just Google UTM builder there's hundreds of them.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Just pick one of the top two. Utm is a standardized practice across the internet. It's a way for websites to understand these little key phrases. So even if you get, you know, a UTM builder from your CRM, that will work exactly the same and just start using UTMs in your practice, even if you don't have the analytics set up yet, because some of these things do naturally come over even with very little setup, as long as you have your Google Analytics tag on your website. So, like that's the minimum, like we're talking minimum viable product, use the UTM builder and make sure your Google tag is on all the pages to your website.

Speaker 2: 31:14

Ok, so now that we have our numbers, now that we have some numbers and you know we're kind of feeling a little bit better about the data that we're getting and the metrics. Okay, Now, right, Like, so what do we do with those numbers and like take, you know, aligned action with them?

Speaker 1: 31:32

Yeah, so I always suggest that you keep your goals small and you keep them few. So what are you curious about in your business? We're keeping our thread of curiosity what are you curious about in your business and what would you really love to improve or iterate on? Because, luckily, as creatives, you tend to be very into the iterative process, the let's keep building. So let's hone in on that energy. Okay, I'm going to give an example and we can go into more detail with that and example if necessary. But so, okay, I'm really curious about who.

Speaker 1: 32:10

You mentioned boutique photography who really tends to book those sessions? Okay, particularly my higher ticket session. Ok, and I've got my numbers set up and I'm starting to notice that social seems to really be driving that conversion, and I've got this set up, that I know it's conversion. Ok, then you take it a step further and we're just following the curiosity of the data. Ok, I want to improve my conversions from social. Okay, so you know that your conversion rate from someone who clicks your link to actually booking is 10%.

Speaker 1: 32:55

What tweaks, what small tweaks, could we do to increase that to 15%? Look at your highest converting reels, because if you've got UTM links set up, guess what your highest converting reels? What was the messaging in that reel? What angle did you use in that reel? Let's replicate that again and see if we get a similar conversion rate. And so we're playing with iterating. I come from a continuous quality improvement background. That's where a lot of my training rest in my corporate career, and so it's looking at what small changes can we make consistently that end up having big impact, because if you try to revamp everything at once, it's just too many variables, too many cooks in the kitchen.

Speaker 2: 33:41

Totally Okay. Yeah, definitely. Breaking it down is a highly desirable piece of information. Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. I love that. And I would love to know too, real quick. I've been doing this for a while and I and you and you see the underside of a lot of businesses, underside of a lot of businesses, and so you know, just from that perspective, what are some like maybe out of the box or like surprise moments that you've had. That I mean obviously without like sharing. You know, yeah, stupid details of the client, but you know like things that you've seen that you were like, oh, that's unexpected and that's interesting, like I love those stories.

Speaker 1: 34:20

My favorites are the oh, here's a subpopulation that we could really tap into. Those are truly my favorites. So a lot of times, particularly when a business already has UTM set up or some basic analytics when I do a VIP day, because that's my primary service, I come in and I really get to spend the day being curious and so I try to look at things that the business owner probably isn't looking at yet and connect those different dots. And so my favorite is we had, I had a client who there was an entire subgroup of her population that, okay, the population was a hundred but only two would convert to her program, so it was a 2% conversion rate. Obviously these numbers are fake 2% conversion rate of that total population into her program.

Speaker 1: 35:11

But her program was made up of 80% of people in that population, meaning that while that total population and they had purchased another product just to be very clear. So like we're not getting super confused on what I'm talking about but like people who purchased this product, they perfectly went into her other program but they didn't know about it and so they weren't converting like they were the perfect fit because they were some of the only people purchasing that primary program. But let's increase that conversion rate. Let's get 10 percent of that population, a coupon code for that small population that ended up being like less than her affiliate fee anyway and increased that conversion rate. It cost her less money, she got higher conversions and she just needed to be curious about that. That one piece of information, that one population. So really for businesses, particularly those that have a brick and mortar present, getting curious about where your people are really coming from, especially the ones that end up following through with booking, that's probably the biggest place you'll find surprises.

Speaker 2: 36:38

Sweet. Yeah, that's really really cool. I love it. And then I wanted to just I think this is so interesting when we were chatting about you coming on the podcast, right, so your expertise obviously is uncovering these hidden opportunities, launch membership data, helping creative entrepreneurs maximize that success like we've been talking about. But you also shared something I thought was really interesting and I wanted to ask you to expand on that, because my podcast is called Tried and True with the Dash of Woo and you mentioned I really love the Dash of Woo because to you you said the woo is just other data that we can incorporate into numbers to get even expansive information, and I was like, okay, you're speaking to my soul, tell me more.

Speaker 1: 37:24

Yes, so the more is. I subscribe to the belief that magic is just science we don't understand yet, and I incorporate that Now. I am one of those nerdy kids that would desperately wants to be woo Like. I want to be the witch in the woods in my cottage, but I'm just not good at it. So I surround myself by wooers and not the ones that will stroke my ego, but the ones that are into woo. But I truly believe that your human design, the astrological orientations, all of that is just different data that we can use to help us inform our decision. So if the data is showing you something really off and you're into astrological signals, that's another piece of data to help you interpret the more quote, unquote rational data that you're seeing in front of you.

Speaker 1: 38:20

Your intuition is just other data to help inform. The data is showing me that this decision is the right one, but my gut's telling me something's off. Well then, maybe you're looking at the data wrong. So all of these different bits of woo are just other data through which, really the kind of the filter glasses, right Through which you can see the data that's on the piece of paper.

Speaker 2: 38:44

I love it. I've never heard it framed that way and I absolutely am so on board, because I'm always talking about how it's like these are all just tools in our tool belt of self-awareness, and the more self-aware we are, the better business owners we're going to be, the better humans we're going to be, just in general. The better business owners we're going to be, the better humans we're going to be, just in general. Like you know, yes, a lot of us tend to be super like these neurodiversity peeps that I was talking about. All of us.

Speaker 2: 39:10

We tend to be pretty self-aware, but then we sort of also can fall into that trap of like I don't know what to do with all of the self-awareness. So that's obviously, you know, a different sort of step, but what I'm talking about here is using that as data, essentially. So I love that you spoke to that, because I'm definitely nerdy as well, and I mean, like even down to AI and you know, using all the things that we have available to us there and getting curious about how we can incorporate all of that to make our data make more sense as well.

Speaker 1: 39:48

Exactly, it's all about curiosity. If there's one word to take away from our conversation, it is curiosity.

Speaker 2: 39:54

Super cool. I love this. Okay, Thank you so much for being here. This was awesome. I know you've got some resources for people as well, so feel free to share like where you like to connect with people. I'll put all of it in the show notes and then you know anything that you have as well that you want to share.

Speaker 1: 40:11

I'll save the links here, but I will be giving you some UTM links because you know, got to be, got to be on track, practice what I preach, Right. So my the best way to connect with me and really have a conversation with me my DMs are always open. On Instagram it's Kelsey E Silver. Don't forget the E at someone else if it's not. So it's Kelsey E Silver. On Instagram it's me holding the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Speaker 2: 40:36

You'll notice we're going to have to have a whole conversation about that offline.

Speaker 1: 40:40

Perfect, my daughter's named after someone in the books, so that's the best way to connect with me, to have a convo. But I do have a freebie that I'd love for you to get, especially if you're really just still unsure about what to track. It's called Million Dollar Metrics. It's the 15,. I asked 15, six and seven figure business owners If you were stuck on a desert island and could only measure one thing in your business, what would you measure? And they gave me their answer and reasoning. So it's if you are completely stuck and have no idea what you'd measure, here's 15 ideas of the only thing to start measuring If you really had to start.

Speaker 1: 41:19

And that is at kelseysilvercom slash metrics. You don't need to eat all that. That is at kelseysilvercom slash metrics. You don't need to eat all that one. So kelseysilvercom slash metrics. But I'll get you all the links as well.

Speaker 2: 41:28

Perfect. Yeah, I'll put those in the show notes for you guys so you just like look there and even on YouTube, like you'll see them in the description there. So super easy. Thank you so much. This was like really fun and very insightful, so I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 41:40

Thank you so much. This was like really fun and very insightful, so I appreciate you so much for having me.

Speaker 2: 41:43

This was an absolute pleasure. I told you you were going to learn some things and I told you you were going to feel better about numbers, right? That was such a juicy episode. We went to a lot of different places. I hope that it made sense for you. Like, as we were chatting, I was like, oh my gosh, this is going to. I could I can just kind of see the takeaways, you know, happening in real time, not just for you, but for me, right? So I'm a creative, I totally get it, and data is something that I love. I love the idea of tracking data and I love the idea of finding money. That is so freaking cool, but you just get lost in it sometimes, right, and so you can get to this place where it's like, yeah, that sounds great, but I don't know where to even start with that. So I hope you now have a place to start. I actually know you have a place to start. You just need to make sure you take the steps to do it. So go ahead and hit the links for her below, follow her, get that free resource, and just. At least.

Speaker 2: 42:40

I hope this helped you reframe your conversation about data and metrics in your business and, of course, I want to hear all your takeaways. So go to rate this podcastcom. Slash Renee Bowen to leave a review. Rate us. You can do it for any platform from there, so it makes it really easy, and I'd love to hear your takeaways on Instagram. Hit me up over there at Renee Bowen. Just DM me. If you've got some feedback or insights that you loved and if you want to share about this episode, you can do that and tag me and you might win something. All right, I hope you guys loved that, enjoyed it, and I hope you have a great rest of your week as well. All right, go do some good stuff and do something good for yourself. I'll see you next time. Love you, bye.